What Is Come & Try?

Come & Try is a structured program that gives people curious about croquet a proper way in — and gives clubs a reliable way to find new members.

Most sports have an obvious front door. You sign up for a season. You join a gym. You rock up to a parkrun. Croquet doesn't have that. If you've heard something about it, driven past a lawn, and thought "that looks interesting" — there's usually no obvious next step.

Come & Try is the front door.

How it works

Someone visits comeandtrycroquet.com and puts their hand up. They enter their name, email, and postcode. The system finds their nearest participating club and sends an immediate welcome email.

A volunteer calls to book a taste test. Not a big club event — a personal booking, usually one-on-one or with a small group. They come out to the lawn, hit some balls, run some hoops, have a cup of tea. No instruction manual, no performance pressure. Just: here's a mallet, here's a ball, let's see if you enjoy this.

They come back a couple of times. After the taste test, they come to normal club days. Members know their name. The games start to make sense. By the third or fourth visit, most people have quietly decided whether croquet is for them.

If they want to join, they join. One conversation, form ready, payment sorted. No hard sell. The decision is theirs, and the program trusts them to make it.

What the program delivers for clubs

A consistent pipeline of interested, engaged people — not trickle-in cold enquiries, but warm leads who've already signed up, watched the email sequence, and booked a time to come in.

Clubs don't run the advertising or manage the sign-up system. They just run the sessions: welcoming, low-key, built around the game. The digital side handles the rest.

Where it's been run

The program was piloted at East Brisbane Croquet Club in early 2026. Sixteen people came through in six weeks. The club committee called it the highest membership growth they'd seen. Several confirmed they intended to join; others are still finding their feet.

The advertising ran on Facebook targeting the 55–69 age group across five nearby postcodes. The cost per lead came in at $6.53 — three to four times cheaper than expected. The hand-drawn "Miss Your Garden?" ad outperformed every photograph.

Full figures: The Evidence

For clubs: how to get involved

Come & Try works best with multiple clubs participating in a region at the same time. The advertising operates at a regional scale — Facebook finds interested people across greater Brisbane, not just one postcode — and clubs share the leads by proximity.

If your club wants to run Come & Try sessions, the system handles the sign-ups, email follow-up, and lead matching automatically. Your role is the in-person part: running good taste tests, welcoming visitors on club days, and having the enrolment conversation when the time feels right.

Contact hello@croquetclaude.com to register your club's interest.