Superb Russian Croquet Site

[<<] [>>] by Ian Plummer
30th August 2007 (Other News)

The annual membership fee for the Croquet Association in 1901 was 20s. 6d (£1.03) for Gentlemen, yet only 5/- (25p) for Ladies.

Sir Compton Mackenzie OBE was CA President in 1957.

These were just a couple of interesting facts from www.croquet-club.com/ - a Russian croquet web site which is an absolute treasure chest of fascinating material. WOA! before you go there, it is in Cyrillic! Fortunately if you go to babelfish.altavista.com/ and copy the URL into the "Translate a Web page" box and select 'Russian to English' you can browse the site in approximate English.

The development of Russian Croquet is obviously well documented and the photo galleries have masses of pictures of old Cyrillic rule books and early croquet equipment. It also has an extremely large collection of croquet pictures and prints.

The site is extensive and moderately straightforward to navigate - for an initial taste click on "the history of the game" top tab - note the gallery. Similarly see the gallery in the "of rule" tab.
Amongst the carefully collected items are 24 videos mainly of coaching; "this is Ray, today's video..." Not sure I agree with all the delivered wisdom. There is also a collection of croquet club logos (around 100) - food for thought if you are designing a new one.

Well worth a visit.