THE MAC CONTINUED
Essick takes contact and with some enterprising play, makes his last 3 hoops, but then misses a 10-yarder. After a couple of turns Fulford allows Essick a sight of the peg from 16 yards, but a miss would give a good chance for the break. Essick does miss. Fulford does finish with scarcely an alarum. Game 3: after a supershot opening there are 3 balls in the middle of the lawn. Essick hits 4th turn but fails to get going. Fulford goes to 4-back, Essick hits and completes a standard TPO (Triple Peel on the Opponent). Fulford has two good half-chances in the endgame but Essick is able to progress to 3-back, before pegging out his peg ball to leave a 2 ball ending that he soon finishes to win the match +2, -1, +11TPO. This didn’t prevent England running out 15-6 winners, with NZ defeating Australia even more convincingly, 16-5. The deciding test – England v New Zealand Previous results, both in this event and previous ones, suggested the match would be close. Day one James Death and Samir Patel played extremely well to beat the strong Kiwi pair of McCorkindale and Westerby, but New Zealand won the other 2 matches to take an early lead. Day two Death & Patel win again, as do Fulford & Good (Fulford’s 100th Mac match win, at the third time of asking) but the invincible England pairing of the previous Shield campaign, Avery & Burch, drop another match, leaving the test level at 3-3. Day three All six singles matches in this round were extremely competitive, with England edging ahead 3-2 on the day. Now I must mention the Game That Would Not Die. At some point, maybe around teatime, my understanding is that Jack Good attempted a peg-out. The croqueted ball hit. The striker’s ball went a couple of yards past. Good missed. Later, Good hit in. “He’ll probably take off to the peg and miss,” opined some wag by lawn 4. I really wish I hadn’t said that.
At 6.20pm Westerby won game 1, +1. Progress in game 2 was more rapid, but still had to be pegged down with Westerby 4-back & 4-back, Good 2-back and penult, with a break for the forward ball. England 6 New Zealand 5 England are ahead for the first time, crucially winning two matches from game down.Day Four Death & Patel won their fourth doubles match on the trot, but Fulford & Good lost to McCorkindale & Westerby. The third match had to be pegged down. As the light failed in the third game Burch went round and pegged out Chapman. Avery was for 4-back, Fordyce penult. England 7 New Zealand 6 Final Day Though they were ranked #2 in the playing order, I feel the respective talismans of each team were Robert Fulford and Paddy Chapman. They were the only AC world champions in the event. And their match got off to an excellent start for England, with Fulford winning game 1 +26TP by about 1015. 1050: Patel wins game 1 +26 v Fordyce. 1100: Death wins first game +17QP v McCorkindale. An impressive turn, albeit one that had the English commentary team nervously on the edges of their seats at times! 1235: Fulford hits peg from 12 yards to win the match 2-0. England 8 New Zealand 6
1248: Burch wins game 1 v Webby. 1250: Clarke wins game 1 v Good. 1255: McCorkindale wins game 2 v Death. 1312: Avery wins game 1 v Westerby.
At lunch, England have won one match, are game up in three, game down in one, and all square in the top match. 1540: three Englishmen are on finishing turns: Death and Burch on triples, Patel 4-back and peg. If all finish, England win. 1542: I delete “foolhardy” from my notes. A brave triple peel from Burch to win his match 2-0. England 9 New Zealand 6
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