Chris Borlase stood over his ball on a lawn in Perth. The last match didn't have long to go. Third place at the 2026 Eire Cup hung on the next few hoops.

This is the cup itself. A silver rose bowl that has been around since 1937. The Australian international team won it in Dublin that year, beating Ireland four games to two, and brought it home to Victoria. The cup sat unused through the war and was first played for as an interstate trophy in Adelaide in 1948, and in Brisbane the year after. The Australian Croquet Council was formed the same year, and the Eire Cup became its property, and it has been Australia's interstate Association Croquet championship since.

The 2026 Cup was held in Perth, mid-April, hosted by Croquetwest. Six state teams. Eight players each, four men and four women. Round-robin across the week. Singles and mixed doubles. Whichever state wins the most tests wins the cup.

For 2026, that team was New South Wales. They went 5–0. The last test came on Sunday against Victoria, and it was the closest of NSW's week. They edged it eleven games to nine.

The standings show NSW made a clean sweep this year. NSW beat everyone. Victoria beat everyone except NSW. Queensland beat everyone except NSW and Victoria. South Australia beat the bottom two. Tasmania beat only Western Australia, who lost every test on their own lawns.

Queensland finished third. The loss to NSW was tight, nine games to eleven, the same margin NSW would later get against Victoria. The loss to Victoria was less generous: seven to thirteen, a test that Queensland never really got a look into. The three wins were against Tasmania, Western Australia, and South Australia. The first two were comfortable. The third was the one that gave Queensland third place.

Three Queenslanders carried the bulk of the team's wins in Perth. Yuni Rowell, who has won the Australian AC Women's Singles in both 2023 and 2025, returned to Perth and won eight of her ten singles for the state. Heather Knight, the team's manager, played very well, winning nine of her twelve matches across singles and doubles. Greg Bury kept pace with both, winning three quarters of what he played. Captain Jacky Lynch, Shane Davis, and Kathie Grant all sat above sixty per cent.

Not everyone had the form they came in with. The Eire Cup is a different animal to a state event. Dave Luxmoore, who had pushed Davis to within two hoops at the Bribie final in the lead up, only won one match in nine across the week. That is how Eire Cup form sometimes travels. Sarah Widin had a better time, playing her first interstate competition: she won her debut singles for Queensland on the fourth day and the team voted her player of the day. She backed it up after the doubles that morning.

All of which led to the Sunday. Queensland against South Australia, for third place. The first round of mixed doubles finished even. The next round of singles was still close. With half an hour to go in the test, the match fell on a single game: Chris Borlase against Mark Kobelt of South Australia.

A peg-out is the finish in Association Croquet. Once you've made all the hoops with both your balls, you can attempt to peg out, striking the centre peg with both of your balls to end the game in your favour. Borlase played his with what the Queensland team know as a Kooralbyn peg-out.

The shot was in.

The Queensland team had been watching from the side, and they reacted the way a team reacts when the last shot of a long week lands.

Queensland did not win the Eire Cup. NSW did, and the wider story of the week is theirs.

However Queensland played proudly. They lost their two tests by margins that felt closer than the score lines, and they won the third-place decider on the team's final shot of the week.

The silver rose bowl is in Sydney with the winners. It is a ninety-year-old trophy. It has been to Dublin, to Adelaide, to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and other cities. It will travel again next April, to Brisbane. The Queensland team will be eager to improve on third position on their home courts.