News reports and photos sent to news#croquet.org.uk go to The Croquet Gazette, the website and other interested parties.
All reports are welcome; and the sooner they are sent after the event, the more welcome they are!
If you have a photo of an event, just send it straight away, someone else might send a report with no photo. If you take a good croquet-related photo at any time, please send it. If you want to crop photos, do so, but we'd prefer you to leave them at full resolution - whilst we do reduce them for the web, The Croquet Gazette needs as many pixels as possible! You don't need expensive kit - phone-camera snapshots are welcome.
In particular, we'd like photos of people in play, rather than "grip-and-grin" shots of the winner holding the trophy.
When you send in a photo, please make sure you include as much detail as possible in the accompanying email: where and when it was taken, who is in it, and what was the event.
If you need to present information in a table, just use a single tab between the columns.
Often, information sent in a spreadsheet is difficult to use, particularly blocks - separating it into who-beat-whom is much appreciated.
You should include the date of the event, and make sure the games are in the order in which they were played (this has significance for the ranking system since a player's index is calculated after each game).
Always state the result and place (unless obvious):
Fred Bloggs won the Little Snodgrass OpenLittle Snodgrass beat Upper Dixall 4-3 at Surbiton in the Secretary's Shield
The ideal format for reporting results is as follows, note that the date is an essential part of the results report:
Little Snodgrass Open 20-25 July 2006
Fred Bloggs beat John Doe +26 Bruce Smith beat Percy Picacity +7 John Smith beat Jock McTavish +10 Fred Bloggs beat Bruce Smith +4 John Doe beat John Smith +17tp Percy Picacity beat Jock McTavish +26tp
For best-of-threes:
Fred Bloggs beat Jock McTavish +16, -3, +26tp John Doe beat Bruce Smith -6, +17, +17tp
Note that there is no space between the score and the peeling; similarly a game that went to time would be (for example) +11t.
Golf croquet scores should be reported (again without spaces) as A beat B 7-5, 4-7, 7-3.
If the event is played in blocks followed by play-offs, then please separate the blocks and the play-offs. The final should be the last game in the list.
Consolation and plate events count for different amounts in the rankings and so should be separated from the main events.
Please refer to the Association Croquet ranking Officer's website for any further instructions.