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Hall of Fame
Stephen Mulliner

Born: 4 September 1953
Inducted: 2012

Stephen Mulliner discovered "serious" croquet as an undergraduate at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1975.  An early opportunity to see Keith Wylie in action and the discovery that croquet had an international dimension in the form of the MacRobertson Shield contest cemented his interest and ensured that croquet would displace golf and become his principal competitive recreation.  He confirmed his place at the top level of the game by winning the President's Cup for the first time in 1981 and enjoyed a decade-long rivalry with Nigel Aspinall until the late 1980's which saw the arrival on the scene of a new generation of first-class players.  For over thirty years, Stephen has remained in contention with the younger stars and shows no sign of losing his competitive edge, culminating in victory in the 2016 Association Croquet World Championship in West Palm Beach, Florida at the age of 62.  In 2000, he began to compete in the British Open Golf Croquet Championship and now plays both AC and GC with equal enthusiasm.

Stephen has travelled widely in pursuit of international competition and won the first three of the Sonoma-Cutrer championships in 1986 to 1988.  He achieved his goal of representing Great Britain in 1982 when GB regained the MacRobertson Shield in Australia and has since appeared on seven further occasions.  He is, so far, the only player to have won the singles and doubles AC championships of Australia, England, New Zealand and the USA.  He has also won AC or GC national or open championships in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Spain and Switzerland and has won numerous European Championships in both codes.  He has also competed in Egypt, France, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa and Sweden.

Shortly after Stephen became a presence on the tournament circuit in the late 1970s, he began to develop a grading system for croquet players that was based on the Elo System used for chess.   The system gradually became an established service to the playing community and grading lists were published annually in the Croquet Gazette.  Stephen single-handedly maintained the AC grading system until the mid-1990s when Chris Williams offered to help and handed over responsibility completely in 1997.  In 2007, he took over the GC grading system from Bill Arliss and maintained it until 2021 when, after re-designing the system so that it can be updated by national ranking officers, he passed on the task to Richard Bilton.

Stephen joined the CA Council in 1980 and quickly became an active and vocal contributor, serving as chairman of several committees, as Sponsorship Officer for several years and then as Chairman of Council from 1990 to 1992.  With Nigel Aspinall, he was responsible for the introduction of seeding in major events and, to meet rising demand, the extension of the Open Championship from its traditional six day format to the today's nine day format.  He was elected a Vice-President of the CA in 2001.   A lawyer by training, Stephen has always had a keen interest in the AC Laws and GC Rules.  He played a major role in the production of the AC Laws 6th Edition in 2000 and was the original author of ORLC (the Official Rulings on the Laws of Croquet).  He was appointed as the CA representative on the WCF Golf Croquet Rules Committee in 2017 and served as Editor of both the 5^th and 6^th Editions of the WCF Rules of Golf Croquet which were approved by the WCF Council in July 2018 and March 2022 respectively.  His administrative interests became international when he was elected President of the European Croquet Federation in 1998, a position he held until 2018, and were further extended when he was elected to the World Croquet Federation Management Committee in 2009.  He became the Secretary-General of the WCF in 2013 and was re-appointed for a further four-year term in 2017.  Stephen retired as Secretary-General on 31st August 2021. He became the chairman of the WCF Golf Croquet Rules Committee in 2022.

Stephen has always found great enjoyment in playing, supporting and administering both codes of the game.   A wonderful temperament, good sportsmanship and excellent demeanour have made him the perfect ambassador for the sport of croquet.

Playing achievements

Association Croquet

President's Cup winner: 1981, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1992, 2023 and a record 45 appearances from 1978 to 2023.

British Open Champion: 1988, 1990, 2000 and 47 consecutive appearance from 1977 to 2023.

British Doubles Champion: 1980, 1981, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2010, 2018 (shared), 2022, 2023.

British Men's Champion: 1984, 1985

World Champion: 2016, finalist 1997 and 2008, semi-finalist 1989, 1995, 2018

European Champion: 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013

Australian Open Champion: 2009

Australian Open Doubles Champion: 2009

New Zealand Open Champion: 2009

New Zealand Open Doubles Champion: 2000

US National Singles Champion: 2011

US National Doubles Champion: 2011

Golf Croquet

British Open Champion: 2000, 2001, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2020

British Doubles Champion: 2006, 2007, 2010, 2016, 2017

English National Singles Champion: 1981, 1991, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023

First Eight winner: 2015, 2019, 2023

European Champion: 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2019

Spanish Open Champion: 2015

World Championship: semi-finalist 2000, 2006, 2015

[Updated 10.2.23]

Hall of Fame
Reg Bamford

Born: 1967
Inducted: 2011

Reg Bamford is one of the most accomplished players in croquet history.  He is a three-time WCF Association Croquet World Champion and twice the WCF Golf Croquet World Champion (in 2013 and 2017) and held both titles simultaneously from April to August 2013.  He has won the British Association Croquet Open Championship eleven times since 1992 and the British Golf Croquet Open Championship ten times since 2002 and is the holder of more than 50 individual championship titles.

Beginning the game at age nine in South Africa, Reg began competing at the highest level almost immediately.  Since 1986, his end-of-year playing grade has only dipped below 2,600 on two occasions.  He has achieved the year-end Number One world ranking eight times and has been consistently ranked among the top five players in the world for nearly a quarter of a century.

Reg is also one of the most likeable individuals in the game, a great ambassador for the sport and his native country. Despite living in the UK since the early 1990s, Reg has consistently maintained his South African nationality in world croquet competitions.  This devotion has surely kept him from competing for Great Britain in the prestigious MacRobertson Shield, as his residency in London and an Irish grandfather would allow.

Reg is also the only known individual to have ever played croquet at the North Pole.  This occurred in April 2005, when Reg trekked to the Pole with, among much needed survival provisions, a croquet mallet and a ball.

Reg’s adventurous spirit is amplified by his intense determination and dedication  to croquet.  He is known among players for his rigorous training exercises, spending hours alone on the court after matches are completed, perfecting his swing and technique.

Reg’s dedication reaches well beyond croquet.  He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and founder and CEO of Sable Group (formerly 1st Contact) —a recruitment enterprise which provides financial and migration solutions to South African and other professionals living in the UK and Europe.

Reg and his wife, Adrienne, currently reside in London and have two children, Alex and Oliver.

Updated August 2017

Hall of Fame
Tom McDonnell

Inducted: 2011

Tom McDonnell played croquet in the company of the Hollywood elite on his  home court in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.  Actors, including David Niven, Louie Jordan, Gig Young, George Saunders and Diana Hyland would always be at the house to play.

Tom was introduced to the game while working in the television industry in the late 1950s by movie producer Sam Goldwyn.

He ultimately was inducted into the U.S. Croquet Hall of Fame and was responsible for the development of tournament croquet on the West Coast, starting croquet clubs in Beverly Hills, San Francisco and at Sonoma-Cutrer winery in Santa Rosa.

It was at the family's home court in the hills west of St. Helena that he introduced the game of croquet to Meadowood Founding Partner H. William (Bill) Harlan.

At that time, in 1986, Harlan and his partners had owned Meadowood for approximately seven years and with some gentle persuasion decided to include croquet as an activity at the retreat.

To ensure the courts would satisfy world-ranking croquet players, Harlan engaged McDonnell to collaborate on the development of the competition lawns.  They opened in 1986 and that same year, Meadowood co-hosted the U.S. Croquet Championships, the first time they had been held outside of the state of New York.

Tom had also been responsible for the laying of world-class courts at Sonoma-Cutrer.  Those courts were awarded the 1986 USCA championships jointly with Meadowood.

As a direct result of the tireless work put in by Tom, Australian players Damon Bidencope and Neil Spooner attended those championships and in the following year became the resident professionals at Meadowood and Sonoma-Cutrer respectively.

Without the wonderful dedication of Tom Mc Donnell, the sport of croquet in the USA would not have reached the level it currently maintains.