BURY Croquet Club's two teams in the North West Handicap League began their season with a head-to-head match last Saturday.

In the morning doubles games Peelers' Ken and Margaret Anderton played Caesar's Tony Phillips and Colleen Forkin. Tony successfully shepherded Colleen round with tactical advice, but failed to get his own shots working so well.

Ken and Margaret made slow but steady progress to win at Time by six points.

On the other court Geoff and Barbara Young for the Peelers contended with Caesar's Len Forkin and Yvonne Gibson. The Caesar pair used their bisques (handicap turns) to get well advanced in the first hour, but in the second hour the Youngs caught up and continued scoring while the Caesar pair made little progress.

Geoff pegged out eight ahead with twenty minutes to spare.

In the afternoon's singles games all the Caesar players had the bisques and used them to get ahead in the early stage. Barbara pegged out first for the Peelers, twelve points to the good, and Geoff's game with Yvonne had a very close finish where the pegout by Geoff five ahead sounds more convincing than the true pattern.

On the the other court both games went to Time. Ken and Tony had another dour struggle, Ken being five points up at the end. Colleen scored slowly but steadily and beat Margaret by three on time, the Caesar team's consolation game in a win by the Peelers by five games to one.

On Monday four of the same players turned out in the club's first match in the new Midweek League, at home to Pendle

In the doubles Barbara and Margaret had an very tight game which resulted in efeat by one point at Time.

The Forkins also had a slow contest, the Pendle pair winning by seven on Time.

In the singles Barbara began by hitting in with the fourth ball onto tne court and ran a very sound break. Her opponent got in some retaliation but in about 90 minutes they were at leisure, Barbara having pegged out 13 points up.

The other three games all went to time. Len was four points down, Colleen 6 up, and Margaret 4 ahead to give a match result of a 3-3 draw.