By John Thomson
Last Monday 5 September saw the start of the Spring Level Play Season for Lilydale Croquet Club.
In the Autumn season Lilydale was able to field two teams in the competition, the Lilydale Legends and the Lilydale Limeburners, with Lilydale Legends finishing the season as the champions.
This Spring season because of fixturing constraints Lilydale is only able to field one team, the Lilydale Limeburners.
Lilydale hosted Kew in the first game of the season. Unfortunately for Kew they struggled to field a side, so it was an under strength Kew that faced a very strong pairing in Glenn Crook and Craig McCracken from Lilydale and the scores certainly reflected this with Lilydale winning 4 games 33 hoops to Kew 1 game 17 hoops.
Next game Lilydale are home again, this time against Monash who always field a very strong team.
Thursday 8 September also saw Lilydale travel to Ringwood for the second game of the handicap shield.
Ringwood, like Lilydale, are introducing some new players into their lineup.
During the first game one of the Lilydale players, Alan Jones, became unwell and had a medical timeout, Alan came back on court and went on to win his game but unfortunately would take no further part in the game. Lilydale introduced their medical substitute for the rest of the games.
Lilydale went on to win the day, Lilydale 5 games 41 hoops to Ringwood 1 game 30 hoops.
It was a great team effort by Lilydale especially by the newer members who keep improving with every game.
This puts Lilydale on top of the ladder after the first two weeks but there is still a lot of croquet to play with seven rounds remaining.
