Fenwick Elliott Mallets

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Adelaide is the Croquet Capital of the World

Why? There are a number of possible of criteria, which can be canvassed. But Adelaide looks pretty good both in terms of total number of clubs and in terms of clubs per million of population. And also in terms of current top 100 players, and winners of past major events. The following information is far from complete. The statistics usually published do not identify the home city of the players listed.

Perhaps there are people out there who have some relevant statistics?

Here are some thoughts:

v The USA looks good in terms of total number of clubs. But the number of clubs per million of population looks less impressive.

v New Zealand looks great in terms of clubs per million, but where are they? Auckland is good, but not the best. No doubt there are many towns that have a fantastic ratio (one club, or even two, for a population of about 100), but that does not make a capital of the world.

Numbers of clubs

	Number of Clubs	Source	Notes	Approx population (m)	Approx clubs per million head of population
Country
USA	300	www.croquetamerica.com/usca-cfa.asp	“Nearly 300” according to USCA web site	285	1.05
England and Wales	140	www.croquet.org.uk/clubs/index.html		50	2.8
New Zealand	139	www.croquet.org.nz/holdset.htm		3.8	36.58
Cities
Adelaide	19	www.users.bigpond.com/croquetsa/clubs/sa_clubs.htm	Not all of the clubs in SA are in the Adelaide area, only Adelaide clubs counted here	1.1	17
Auckland	12	www.croquet.org.nz/holdset.htm		1.2	10
Christchurch	13	Chris Williams		.33	39
London	10	www.croquet.org.uk/clubs/index.html	2 of the 8 clubs are closed	12	.8

All populations taken from http://sg.travel.yahoo.com/guide/

Players in the top 100 in the World Rankings

Adelaide has 3: Harley Watts, Mark Prater and Albert Rutten (as at May 2005)

Players who have won a major in the last 10 years

Adelaide has at least 2: Colin Pickering and Dean Patterson (as at 2005).

A Possible table

A possible table would take 4 criteria, each measured for a single metropolitan area (we are not looking for tiny CBD like the City of London, nor massive urban conurbations, like Boston/New York/Philadelphia, but sensible concepts of cities. Players get allocated to cities according to where they now regard as their croquet home, typically the location of their main club or where they most often practise and play friendly games.

The four criteria might be

v Total number of clubs

v Number of clubs per million of population (but limited to cities with a population of at least, say, 500,000)

v Number of players in the latest top 100 world rankings

v Number of players who have won a major in the last 10 years.

In each criterion, the top city gets 3 points, the second gets 2, the third gets 1. Biggest total points is the capital. Are there any other cities who want to be counted?