AC One-Day Doubles Tournament

As a variation from the usual arrangements for timed games, on this occasion each pair had its own time-limit of 45 minutes instead of just allocating 90 minutes to the game as a whole. Although not "speed croquet" as such, the usual rules for speed croquet were applied for how play should proceed when one of the sides ran out of time; namely, that side could no longer take croquet. To be precise, play continued under normal AC rules but with the extra condition that all the balls on the court became "dead balls" throughout the turn, as if the striker had already taken croquet  from all of them. The procedure involved having special timers, like large chess clocks, which automatically stopped one side's clock and started the other side's clock when the first side's turn ended.

The upshot was that all 10 of the 14-point games in the tournament actually finished with a peg-out within 90 minutes, something that would almost certainly not have happened using the usual rules for a 90-minute time-limit. For example, in a similar AC doubles tournament of 14-point games in 5 rounds in 2023 at the club, also played with a 90-minute time limit, more than half of them were curtailed by the clock.

In the event, three of the five pairs all finished with 3 wins out of their 4 games, with each of them having beaten one of the two pairs and lost to the other one. So none of the "who beat whom", "win quality" or "wins within time" tie-breakers could separate them, and the determination of a winner had to be resolved with a Nottingham tie-break, i.e. a quick test to see which pair could run the most hoops in a 2-ball break from a rush from corner IV and running hoops in order starting at hoop 4. Michael and Kevin blobbed hoop 4, scoring nil; André and Eddie ran hoop 4 but did not get a good rush to hoop 5 and failed from a poor approach, scoring 1; and Stephen and Mike ran hoops 4 and 5 to score 2 and win the tournament.