Garden Games Sandford Family Croquet Set

The Sandford Family Croquet set is a fantastic way to bring all the family into the wonderful traditional lawn game of croquet, this set is designed to allow everyone in the family to play.

The Garden Games Family Croquet set includes two full sized adult mallets. These mallets are 95cm (36 inches long) with leather grips on each of the handle shafts. The set also includes two brightly coloured smaller mallets that are perfect for children or younger players.  The smaller mallets measure 77cm long and have painted heads one is red the other is blue. Having a variety of mallet sizes in a family croquet set is frankly nothing new or innovative, but what sets our fantastic Sandford Croquet set apart is the balls. Most Family sets have small child sized balls for all four players.

This removes the challenge for the adults and means that younger players are discouraged from continuing on with the game. To help resolve this we have added two 9.2 diameter (12oz) wooden painted balls for the adult players and two 7.5cm (6oz) balls for the younger players.

We have included full sized standard hoops meaning that the game retains it challenge and the adults have to use all their skills to win, while the younger players have an advantage. This means that the play is more level and gives everyone the chance to win. The Croquet hoops (wickets) are painted steel and have the standard 10cm gap between their posts.

The set also includes four plastic croquet clips which many family sets miss out and a painted wooden winning post that is 54cm long. The Sandford Family Croquet set comes complete with a really handy Green Nylon hard wearing carry bag with black woven fabric handles and a removable shoulder strap. This zip closing bag makes our set perfect to take along with you on holiday or to the park.

About Croquet:

The object of croquet is to put your balls through the hoops in a particular order and then hit the centre peg with them before your opponent does so with his balls. The winner scores 26 points (one for each ball through its course of hoops and one for hitting it on to the centre peg). The loser scores anything from 0 to 25.

One player has the red and yellow balls and the other the blue and black. 

The players take it in turns to play, as in snooker, with the "outplayer" sitting on the sidelines waiting for the opponent to finish, either by making a mistake or by playing a safety shot.

At the start of a turn a player may play whichever of his two balls he likes. A turn consists basically of one shot, but just as in snooker, a player can earn extra shots. In snooker there is only one way to do this (by potting a ball of the right colour) but in croquet there are two quite different ways of earning extra strokes: by hitting your ball through its hoop or by making your ball hit one of the others—a roquet.

Roquets and Croquets

A roquet is made when a player makes his ball hit one of the others. He earns two extra strokes by making a roquet: a croquet and a continuation shot.

When he has made a roquet the player picks up the ball he’s been playing (let’s say red) and puts it down in contact with the ball he has roqueted (let’s say blue) wherever it has come to rest. He follows this with a croquet stroke in which he again hits red with his mallet, moving both red and blue.

He then takes one further shot called a continuation stroke, in which he may either run his hoop or else make another roquet. However a player cannot go like this forever, because he is not allowed to roquet the same ball again until either he has run his hoop or his opponent has had a turn