Croquet Vic plans ahead

Croquet Victoria is currently working to a Strategic Plan for the period 2022 to 2026.

The Council's Strategic Plan Implementation Sub-committee is responsible for coordinating a rolling implementation plan. Council reviews progress on the implementation plan at six monthly intervals and re-sets the implementation plan early in each calendar year.

The initial 2022 implementation plan, presented to Council in June 2022, includes planned activities and target outcomes designed to progress towards the overall goals and outcomes set in the Strategic Plan.

The latest version of the Implementation Plan was presented to Council in December 2024.

History of the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan

At its meeting on 13 December 2021, Council approved a Strategic Plan for the period 2022 to 2026. This is now updated with a reworded finance goal, approved by Council on 21 February 2022.

The vision underpinning the plan is to

extend the public recognition, the development and the sustainability of croquet as a sport and a recreational activity for people of all ages and abilities.

The plan encompasses Croquet Victoria's current activities and new initiatives for the future. It is based on a set of strategic priorities and goals for Croquet Victoria over the next five years, relating to

capability and sport development
- support the growth of all forms of mallet sports
- grow croquet as a sport as well as a recreational activity
governance and management
- maintain commitment to good governance
- support and develop leadership and effective and inclusive governance
membership, recruitment and participation
- build membership and participation
- extend the demographics of participants in croquet
financial sustainability, funding and sponsorship
- use its financial resources wisely, diligently and sustainably in pursuit of its goals
- enable investment in the development of croquet at club and regional level
image
- continue to enhance the image and build the profile of croquet in Victoria
- croquet to be recognised as a sport by the wider community

For each of these strategic priority areas and goals, the plan sets out actions, responsibilities, and outcome measures.

Supporting documents to the plan include a five year strategic plan budget and a risk assessment.

Croquet Victoria's current annual budget for 2024 to 2025 reflects commitment to the activities mapped out in the Strategic Plan.

COMPLETED ACTIVITIES

Player Development project

The aim of this project was to provide croquet players with the confidence and skills to become more competitive at a higher level in their sport, by offering a series of intensive planned coaching workshops to an interested group. We hoped participants would enter competition with the goal of improving and enjoying the game more as they progress.

The project has now been completed. Further Player Development workshops are being organised by the Strategic Plan Implementation sub-committee, drawing on funding provided by the State Government under the 2023-2026 Together More Active grant

Funding

The Player Development Project was allocated government funding as a Together More Active Project in the 2020/2021 funding round. This funding enabled Croquet Victoria to pay the lead coaches an honorarium for their time, defray basic travel and accommodation costs, and contribute to meeting the travel costs of assistant coaches.

Each participant was asked to make a one-off contribution of $20 at the beginning of a round of workshops, which will also help defray project costs including provision of a workbook to record their progress.

The workshop program

Ten rounds of workshops were initially planned. In the event, eight rounds were held for Golf Croquet players (mainly at novice level), and four rounds were held for Association Croquet players (two at novice level and two at developing level).

Venues

Eleven clubs expressed interest in hosting workshops when information about the project was initially circulated in early 2020, and some other clubs have recently volunteered. Other clubs were invited to apply to host subsequent workshops.

Coaches

Four lead coaches participated: John van der Touw and Maurice Cevaal-Hewitt, for Golf Croquet, and Stephen Forster and Kenn Boal, for Association Croquet. Using the Croquet Australia coaching manuals as a reference point, the coaches have been developing customised resources for the workshops.

Workshops

The first round of the planned two day Golf Croquet workshops were held at Novice level in Boort (first workshop in November 2021) and at Developing level in Bairnsdale (first workshop in January 2022). Both lead coaches for Golf Croquet participated in these first workshops. The following two two-day workshops were scheduled to give time between workshops for the participants to work on their new skills and try them out in competition. Further rounds were arranged subsequently, hosted by Warrnambool (led by the two lead coaches); Mildura, Beechworth and Ballarat Western (led by Maurice Cevaal-Hewitt); and Ringwood and Williamstown (led by John van der Touw).

For Association Croquet, the first round of workshops were held at Charlton (Developing level) and Elwood (Novice level). Kenn Boal led the Developing Competitor workshops at Charlton, and Stephen Forster and Kevin Beard led the Novice Competitor workshops at Elwood. A second round of workshops for Novice Competitors has been completed at Brighton (led by Stephen Forster and Kevin Beard), and a second round for Developing Competitors is close to completion at Warrnambool (led by Kenn Boal).

Joining the program

The project is currently reaching completion. Spin-off workshops for interested clubs and regions are being organised via the Director Coaching in conjunction with the Strategic Plan Implementation sub-committee.

We look forward to seeing the growth of competition with the enthusiasm of participants in each area that the coaches are able to reach during this project’s timeline, and beyond.

Evaluation

Participants in each set of workshops were asked for their feedback via an online survey. The results have been analysed and will contribute to a final report on the project, incorporated in the 2023/2024 Annual Report.

Contact

The project has been managed by Croquet Victoria's Together More Active Player Development Project working group, led by Tricia Devlin.

VCC Futures consultation

In January 2024 the Croquet Victoria VCC Futures Working Group released a discussion paper on options for the future of the Victorian Croquet Centre.

This was distributed to all clubs and regions, and sent to Croquet Australia and to the other State Associations as stakeholders.

The discussion paper outlined options but did not make any specific recommendation. Members, clubs, regions and other stakeholders were invited to provide feedback to enable a clear recommendation to be formulated, for consideration by regional delegates at the Annual General Meeting in June.

Two Zoom meetings were scheduled for Croquet Victoria members to discuss issues they might wish to raise in relation to the document.

CONSULTATION TIMELINE

Week of 8 January Distribution of discussion paper to clubs and regions

Week of 15 January Distribution of discussion paper to other stakeholders

Tue 20 Feb, 2.30 pm First online forum

A QandA document with responses to questions asked at this forum was published, along with two documents which provide background on the site of the VCC: an Environmental Assessment prior to the site being acquired, and the Contract of Sale.

Thu 21 Mar 7.30 pm Second online forum

Sun 31 Mar Deadline for feedback

Saturday 6 April Summary of feedback circulated to Council, with a proposed resolution to be submitted to delegates

Mon 15 April Council endorsed the motion to be included on the agenda of the Annual General Meeting

Week of 13 May Notice of resolution circulated with AGM papers

17 June Annual General Meeting to include discussion of the resolution.

The outcome of this discussion was unanimous approval by delegates of the proposal before the meeting:

In recognition of the need to strengthen the financial structure of the Victorian Croquet Centre, the Croquet Victoria Council should develop, implement and monitor a five-year Business Plan for the Victorian Croquet Centre with the aim of diversifying revenue and increasing usage.

Terms of reference for a VCC Business Plan working group have now been approved and are available from the Governance page. The group has started meeting and will propose a timeline for its activity to the February 2025 meeting of Council.

Croquet infrastructure plan 2020-2030

BACKGROUND

In late 2017 the Department of Sport and Recreation awarded Croquet Victoria a grant of $40,000 to fund the development of a ten year infrastructure plan for croquet across the area of Croquet Victoria, to run from 2020 to 2030.

Jayson Moran of Insight Leisure Planning was appointed as the consultant to undertake the project. A reference group for the project was also established, comprising two SRV representatives (Ben O’Brien and Kirsty Reidy), a local government officer (Mark Patterson, Manager of Sport and Active Living at Ballarat City Council), and the CEO of a statewide sporting association (Sam Watson, General Manager, Lacrosse Victoria).

For this project, information was collected about the facilities at every club in Croquet Victoria. In early 2018, LGAs, clubs and regions were surveyed. Later in the year a background information document and an initial Issues and Opportunities paper were sent to regions and clubs for comment. This feedback informed a set of draft documents, which were circulated for feedback in February / March 2019. Comments were received from 30 LGAs and a small number of individuals, clubs and regions. These were taken into account in the final documents.

CURRENT PROJECT STATUS

Three documents were approved by Council at their meeting on 15 April 2019.

Executive Summary and Action Plan.
Final Report, including a hierarchy framework for facilities at local, district, regional and state level
Background Research Report.

They provide a basis for a rolling action plan over the period 2020 to 2030. This has been incorporated into our Strategic Plan to 2026.

Council agreed in April 2019 that it would be desirable to maintain an updated database of information on club membership and facilities along the lines of the information provided in the Background Research Report. This will support forward planning by clubs and Croquet Victoria.

To achieve this, clubs are being asked to update club infrastructure data in January each year, starting in 2020. A link to club data is available for each club via their Manage Your Club page. Data collection for 2020 and 2021 achieved 100% completion.

CROQUET FACILITY GUIDE

Croquet Victoria maintains a Croquet Facility Guide, for the information of Local Government Authorities and other groups interested in developing croquet facilities.

In 2019, a second edition was published incorporating the hierarchy framework recommended by the Infrastructure Planning Project.

A third edition was issued in February 2021, including new recommendations on lighting for croquet courts. This latest edition of the Croquet Facility Guide has been circulated electronically to Local Government Authorities and has been made available in hard copy to interested LGAs, clubs and regions.

Constitution review

In line with the Strategic Plan commitment to periodic review of Croquet Victoria's governance arrangements, the Council decided in October 2021 to set up a working group to draft amendments to the current Croquet Victoria constitution, to move to a 9 member Board instead of the federal structure currently in place. Membership was determined by the Committee of Management at its November meeting in 2021.

The group presented its initial ideas to the February 2022 meeting of Council.

In view of the lack of progress since that time, Council determined at its June 2024 meeting to discontinue the working group and to establish a new group with defined terms of reference, to be presented in draft to the July Committee of Management meeting.

Developing the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan - historical note

At the end of 2020, Croquet Victoria reached the end of its Strategic Plan for the period 2015 to 2020. Over this time we maintained a rolling implementation plan, including activities and target outcomes for each year of the plan (now updated for 2020).

A working group then took up work on our next Strategic Plan. This was to run from 2021 to 2025, but is now to start in 2022. This plan incorporates relevant action items from the Croquet Infrastructure Plan for the decade 2020 to 2030, which was endorsed by Council in April 2019 (see below). It embraces the full scope of Croquet Victoria activity, not just new initiatives as in past plans.

In view of the impact of the Corona pandemic, Council agreed at its August 2020 meeting to pause work on this plan and to tackle the issues involved in recovery from the pandemic: a plan for a Recovery Year. First proposals for the Recovery Year were presented to Council at its meeting in October 2020. The final version of the Recovery Year plan was endorsed by Council in February 2021 and was actioned during 2021. Outstanding activities will be folded into the 2022 Implementation Plan.

Council subsequently endorsed the following revised timeline for considering the development of the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan. Links are provided for documents which have been endorsed by Council.

vision and goals (December 2019) - updated in the light of feedback from clubs and regions
strategies to achieve the goals (February 2020)
outcome measures – how we will measure achievement of our goals (June 2021)
draft five year strategic plan budget, and risk assessment (August 2021)
interim report on outcomes of consultation re the plan for 2022 – 2026 (October 2021)
final approval of the plan as a whole (December 2021)

Following the August meeting of Council, a brief consultation version of the draft plan was circulated to clubs and regions, along with the full draft. The Working Group reviewed the comments received and updated the draft plan for submission to Council in December. Thanks to the regions, clubs, and individuals who commented. A compilation of the feedback is available from the Secretary, Croquet Victoria.

The Infrastructure Plan project gives us a plan for

establishing a hierarchy of facilities (local, district, regional, State)
working with LGAs on developing new clubs and improving existing facilities
recruitment activities.

It will also support work on existing facilities, tackling improvements needed in

clubhouses
lawns
lights

Latest update: 7 August 2024/KP

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