Mark Buckley wins the National Forest GC Championship (Open Series)

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We had an entry of 10 for this year's National Forest GC Championship with half of them coming from Leicester, including 3 siblings, and one player from the Czech Republic.

We played an all-play-all block with the top four gaining a place in the semi-finals and the other six playing an all-play-all block for the plate.

The weather forecast for the weekend was hot and sunny on Saturday and even hotter on Sunday.

We completed eight rounds on Saturday but one hour time limits were imposed after lunch because of some long games in the morning. The heat provided an extra challenge to players but at the end of Saturday 7 out of the 10 players were still in contention for the four knockout places with one player on 6 wins and 6 players on 5 wins. This provided a strong focus for most of the 9^th round matches played on Sunday morning.

Three of the five Leicester players reached the semi-finals together with Arthur Rowe from Ashby who won the block with seven wins.

In the semi-finals Alison Murray beat Arthur Rowe in two games, the first of which was very close. The other semi-final between Mark Buckley and Paul Williams went to three games with Mark securing the place in the final.

The final was won very quickly in just under an hour by Mark 7-3, 7-6.

Meanwhile the remaining six players contested the plate. The last round provided what was effectively the plate final between our Czech visitor Miroslav Havlik and Ian Buckley (Mark's brother) from Leicester. Miroslav won giving him five wins out of five and so he won the plate event.

Fortunately the very hot weather forecast for Sunday did not materialise for which we were all very grateful.

Full results are on croquet scores https://croquetscores.com/2025/gc/national-forest-championship-open-series