The Croquet Association Award Scheme

The Croquet Association's National Merit Award Scheme has two aims: to encourage enterprising play and to raise overall skills.

Appropriate badges will be awarded to players on the first occasion they achieve the following:

Bronze	A break of 10 hoops or more, using bisques	The Bronze Award Badge is awarded for making a ten-hoop break, using bisques if necessary. This is your target once you have grasped the idea of using your bisques to build and continue a break, therefore starting to attack opponents positively and confidently.
Silver	A break of 12 points or more, without bisques	The Silver Award Badge comes at the point in your development where you are conceding bisques most of the time, or are taking the first steps into the Advanced game. This award is given for achieving a twelve hoop-point break, sometimes with one or two peels, without using bisques either to set up the break or to continue it, while winning the game.
Gold	A triple peel	The Gold Award Badge is for your first winning Triple Peel in qualifying competitions. The manoeuvre comprises peeling a ball through 4-back, penult and rover, while playing the appropriate break with the second ball, and pegging both out for the direct victory (if it was your partner ball) or going on to win the 3-ball ending if it was your opponent's. It is more often seen in Advanced Play, as one of the standard tactics to avoid giving one of the lifts or contact, but it is also used by the experienced player faced with a fence-full of bisques in a Handicap Tournament. Naturally bisques cannot be used to hit in, or to set up the break, or to carry it out, but that does not preclude qualification in a game in which the player has previously used bisques.
Platinum	A sextuple peel	The Platinum Award Badge is for your first winning Sextuple Peel in qualifying competitions. Because the CA Merit Award Scheme was designed to recognise improvement, it itself has to improve to take account of the increasing level of skill. So, with effect from 1 March 2004, a newly designed "Platinum Award" badge was introduced, as a reward for the player’s achievement of his or her first sextuple peel.

Click to see past award winners.

Conditions

The player must be a CA member at the time the target is achieved.
The break must be on a full-size court.
Singles games only.
The player must subsequently win the game in question.
The game must be part of an event advertised in the CA Calendar (including representative matches and team events).
Further awards must be of a higher category: once a silver award has been gained, the player is not subsequently eligible for a bronze award; once a gold award has been gained, the player is not subsequently eligible for a silver award; once a player has gained a platinum award, no other award may be won.

A 12-point break will not qualify for a silver award if bisques have been used to set it up or to tidy up any leave, neither will a triple peel qualify for a gold award if it is achieved using bisques (in a handicap or advanced-with-bisques match).

Getting your badge

If you think you are eligible for an award, ask your opponent and the Manager (or your club secretary in the case of a team event) to sign a Merit Award Form, add on the reverse the name and address to which the badge should be sent, and send it to:

John Handy
Lavender Furlong
Coventry Road
Dunchurch
Rugby
CV22 6RE

Tel: 01788 810572

An A5 card certificate will be sent to accompany the badge. Back