CONGRATULATIONS to Swindon Croquet Club on its latest grant from Sport England’s Olympic Legacy Fund. Last year’s injection of £42,622 bought a new clubhouse; now a £49,478 boost will bring courts to competition standard.

This will qualify the Swindon club to host national tournaments.

The extra funding is evidence of just how much a sporting organisation can achieve if it’s prepared to make its way through the relevant procedures and commit itself to achieving necessary conditions.

Croquet is popular with people of all ages and abilities, and involves a great deal more strategy and ruthlessness than its genteel image suggests, but nobody would claim it has a mass following.

In spite of this, the club’s first application included an ambitious four-year target of bringing more prospective players through the gates.

The target was achieved in a quarter of the scheduled time, and croquet in Swindon has scarcely enjoyed such a flowering of interest as it is experiencing now.

The success of the grant applications is clearly down to a carefully considered bids, straightforward goal-setting and the collective enthusiasm to make those goals reality.

There are many other sporting organisations across the Swindon area which are just as in need of extra funding as the croquet club, and any who have not already followed the croquet club’s example should do so.

With sports clubs suffering all manner of funding cutbacks, opportunities such as those offered by Sport England should be grasped with both hands.