Category: Hall of Fame

Bob Jackson took up croquet in his late thirties after a career representing New Zealand at international table tennis.  He brought a professional attitude to practice that was almost unknown in croquet in the late 1960s and helped him to rise rapidly to the top of the sport.  He became particularly famous for his accurate shooting which was based on a remorseless practice routine.

Bob regarded a 10 yard roquet as a near-certainty at a time when almost every other player regarded it as a long shot.  This ability allowed him to adopt a tactical approach that was as intimidating to his opponents as it was effective.  Woe betide the player who laid up in a corner less than 14 yards from one of Bob’s balls – the roquet would be taken without hesitation and usually hit and a break extracted.  Bob’s method of picking up breaks was both novel and apparently adventurous.  If faced with an angled two yard hoop 1 off an enemy ball, most players of the time would retire to join partner.  Bob would bang the ball through the hoop up to the north boundary, turn round and hit the hoop 2 pioneer to the south boundary and then split that ball to hoop 3 while getting a lengthy rush on the erstwhile hoop 1 pioneer.  He would hit that somewhere in the direction of hoop 2, approach with his trademark crouch roll stroke and leave himself another two yard hoop.  This would also be banged through at high speed but, with the boundary only seven yards away, he had a break once again.

Bob made full use of his single-ball accuracy to help with the completion of peeling turns.  Most players would play split peels to ensure that they could obtain a short rush on the escape ball.  This kept the break going but the pull created by the split shot was liable to jaws the peel or worse and so endanger the completion of the triple.  The Jackson approach used a straight stop-shot to take pull out of the equation and he simply hit whatever roquet was needed afterwards.  This approach was so successful in his hands that he was soon an acknowledged expert at sextuple peels and became the first player to achieve an octuple peel.  He actually completed two consecutive octuples and almost completed a third on the same day.

Bob Jackson won 14 New Zealand Open Championships between 1975 and 2003 and was the runner-up on many other occasions in that period.  He also won 12 New Zealand Men’s Championships between 1977 and 2005 and 11 Senior Invitation Events between 1972 and 2004.  He also won ten New Zealand Open Doubles Championships (nine with Joe Hogan) between 1973 and 1990.

Bob represented New Zealand in the MacRobertson Shield on six occasions (1974, 1979, 1986, 1990, 1993 and 2000).  He was regarded as the best player in the world by many in the period from 1979 to 1986 but what stands out is the longevity of his career at the top of both Association Croquet and Golf Croquet.

He made his last appearance in the 2008 Association Croquet World Championship at the age of 76.  He came second in his block and produced an extraordinary one-ball finish to defeat Jonathan Kirby, a 28-year-old Great Britain MacRobertson Shield player, in the first round of the knock-out stage.  It was an amazing display of skill for someone in his eighth decade.

Two years earlier, Bob had reached the quarter-final of the 2006 Golf Croquet World Championship and, at the 2015 Golf Croquet World Championship, when aged 83, lost a play-off game 7-6 and so just failed to qualify for the knock-out stage.  He is the first player to demonstrate that it is possible to play genuinely top-class Association and Golf Croquet when well over 65.

Bob was also known as an equipment maker for both table tennis and croquet for many years.  In the late 1970s, he began making mallets which had an excellent reputation for robustness and good value and they soon began making their appearance in England and Australia.  He was one of the pioneers of what has since become a worldwide cottage industry.

Bob died in January 2023 and will be sadly missed by his family, friends and croquet players around the world.

Humphrey Hicks was one of three players, the others being Patrick Cotter and John Solomon. who straddled the English game like colossi in the twenty-five years after the Second World War.  They were croquet’s equivalent of golf’s “Great Triumvirate”.

Hicks played with an upright side style and was well-known for the shrewd, defensive tactics that he liked to employ.  Early in his career he had been a skilled triple peeler but he later decided that there were safer and surer tactics available that were more appropriate to the lawn conditions and opponents that he faced.  He displayed great touch and control allied to infinite patience.

John Solomon regarded him as the greatest player who had ever played and enjoyed telling the story of when he and Hicks were touring Australia giving exhibition matches after the 1950-51 MacRobertson Shield tour.  Solomon asked Hicks why he never did triple peels, so Hicks demonstrated that it was nothing to do with inability by reeling off several in succession!

Hicks joined the Croquet Association in 1919 and rapidly became a first-class player, winning his CA Silver Medal in 1928.  Having won the Champion Cup (the predecessor of the President’s Cup) and the Men’s Championship in 1930 and the Open Championship and the Men’s Championship in 1932, he disappeared from croquet until 1939 when he won the Open Championship again.  After the War, he was described as a pike among minnows and, in the period from 1947 to 1952, won the Open Championship a further five times and the Men’s Championship and the President’s Cup three times each.

In addition to his seven wins in the Open Championship, Hicks was also runner-up on seven occasions, the latest being in 1967.  He won a total of nine Men’s Championships between 1930 and 1966 and six President’s Cup between 1930 and 1961.  He also won eight Open Doubles Championships between 1948 and 1973, three Mixed Doubles Championships and the New Zealand Doubles Championship in 1951 with the young John Solomon.  His win in 1973 with John Soutter was an astonishing 43 years after winning his first major CA title, an interval that remains unsurpassed.  Hicks amassed a total of 34 major titles which was headed only by John Solomon and D.D. Steel for the rest of the twentieth century and has only been outdone since by the prolific Robert Fulford.

Hicks represented England in the MacRobertson Shield series in 1950-1 in New Zealand, 1956 in England and 1963 in New Zealand again.

Unlike some top players who lost their enthusiasm when their powers began to wane, Hicks continued to play in tournaments with evident enjoyment into his eighties and was always ready to reminisce about croquet in the 1920s and 1930s.  He reputation as one of the greatest players in the history of croquet remains secure.

Chris Clarke discovered croquet as a teenager at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Blackburn.  He rose rapidly to the top of the sport and has won every major event in Association Croquet and several in Golf Croquet.  However, this is only a small part of his overall contribution to the game as he has served in many coaching and administrative positions over the past 30 years.  He moved to live in New Zealand in 2005.

In his playing career, Chris has won every major singles title in Association Croquet, including the World Championship (in 1995 and 2008), the Australian, British and New Zealand Open Championships, the President’s Cup, the British Men’s Championship, the Sonoma-Cutrer World Championship and the New Zealand Silver Tray.

His doubles record is also extraordinary.  He and Robert Fulford are the only players to have held the Australian, British and New Zealand Doubles Championships simultaneously.  Chris has also won the British Doubles Championship 12 times (including one shared).  In the MacRobertson Shield, he and Robert Fulford have won a record 23 consecutive doubles matches and a record 42 doubles victories in total.  Chris is the also only player to have won the British and New Zealand Open Doubles Championship with more than one partner (Robert Fulford and David Maugham in the former and Robert Fulford, Hamish McIntosh (twice) and Jenny Williams (now Clarke) (four times) in the latter).  He is also the only player to have won 20 national open doubles championships.

His other individual achievements include the first sextuple peel in the Association Croquet World Championship in 1991 and the first delayed sextuple peel in the same event in 1995.  At 17, he was the youngest ever winner of the President’s Cup in 1988 and, at 24, became the youngest ever Great Britain captain in 1996.  In 2007, he completed 20 consecutive triple peels in tournament play.  Chris has appeared in a total of six winning MacRobertson Shield teams – five for Great Britain (1993, 1996, 2000, 2003 and 2006) and one for New Zealand (2014).  He was selected for Great Britain in 2010 but could not play because of health problems.  He was placed first in the Association Croquet world rankings from early 2008 to 2010.

In Golf Croquet, Chris has won several New Zealand titles and reached the semi-finals of the Golf Croquet World Championship in 2008 and 2015.  He was a member of the Rest of the World team that defeated Egypt in 2008 and captained New Zealand to victory in the 2016 Golf Croquet World Team Championship.  He was ranked first in the Golf Croquet world rankings at the end of 2010.

Chris has made a significant contribution to croquet as an administrator.  He served on the CA Council in the early nineties and on the Colchester Club committee for several years.  After moving to New Zealand, he served on the Canterbury Croquet Association committee, first as Tournament Convenor and then as President.  He also served on the CNZ Handicap Review Committee and, for part of 2010, as WCF Secretary-General.  He chaired the Organising Committee for the 2008 Association Croquet World Championship in Christchurch, New Zealand which was seen as one of the best World Championships from a playing perspective and also generated a profit of $25,000 for the benefit of Canterbury clubs.  As a member of the United Club in Christchurch, he was involved in the bid to obtain a new clubhouse and a seventh lawn and also served as the groundsman for several years.  In 2009, he organised a trip to Europe for some NZ Juniors and managed the players in the first Under 21 Golf Croquet World Championship in Egypt.  He has been elected a Life Member of the United Croquet Club and the Canterbury Croquet Association in recognition of his contributions to the sport.

His contribution as a coach has been just as impressive.  For two seasons in the nineties, he coached the Great Britain Under-21 Squad which included Jamie Burch, Kristian Chambers and James Death.  Burch and Death are now MacRobertson Shield players.  Between 2000 and 2005, Chris gave several Gold plus level coaching courses which were recognised as the most detailed and best presented courses that many of the players had ever attended.  Since moving to New Zealand, he has served as the coach of the Under-21 Squad and run coaching courses of the NZ Development Squad in the North Island and several courses for all levels of AC and GC players in Canterbury and Timaru.

 [Updated September 2018]

Jerry Stark was a larger-than-life character who made a tremendous impact on croquet both in and beyond the USA.  There is no record of him owning a dog called Toto but that did not stop him from finding his own “yellow brick road” when he moved home.

After discovering tournament croquet in 1983, he quit a lucrative union job with General Motors in Kansas City, Missouri and travelled 1,000 miles to Phoenix, Arizona - to play croquet.  That’s dedication for you!

Jerry got his break into international play in 1987 at the second Wine Country Invitational (later known as the Sonoma-Cutrer World Championship) and, in 1990, reached the semi-final of the second WCF Association Croquet World Championship at the Hurlingham Club in London.  He had already made such an impression with his shorts held up by red braces and a huge grin surrounded by a ginger handlebar moustache and viking beard that his photograph made it onto the front page of the London Times newspaper.

Jerry was a member of 17 USA National Teams, competed in the WCF Association Croquet World Championship 10 times and in the Sonoma-Cutrer World Championship 10 times.  He was a USCA National Champion five times and the winner of the inaugural Resort Invitational in Welches, Oregon.  He was elected to the USCA Hall of Fame in 2000.

In 1989, Jerry was named Assistant Director of Croquet at the luxurious resort at Meadowood in Napa Valley, located in the wine country of Northern California.  In 1992, he was promoted to Director of Croquet.  He delighted in introducing guests there to what he called the "grown-up" game of croquet.  At Meadowood, Jerry taught an average of 3,000 lessons a year—more than 60,000 lessons over the course of his career, establishing him as one of the sport’s most prolific and admired teachers.

Throughout the world, Jerry became the face of American croquet.  As an ambassador for the game, he made friends everywhere with his infectious laugh and unvarying good nature.  A giant bear of a man, yet gentle as spring cub, Jerry paved the way for other Americans to succeed in international play.  It was a huge sadness for the croquet world when he passed away at the early age of 56 from cancer in May 2010.

It was a fitting tribute to his croquet career that, only six months earlier, he had been part of the first USA team to defeat Great Britain in the Solomon Trophy.  It is a fitting tribute to him that the USCA National Association Croquet Championship is now played for the Stark Cup.

Neil Spooner became a household name in Australia after taking up croquet in 1970 and progressing through the ranks to reach the "A" grade in only nine months.  At his best he was one of the most formidable shots in the game.  Playing with an Irish style and from a firmly planted stance, he had one of the most powerful roquets in the game and often seemed to be unable to miss from any range.

Neil began playing Golf Croquet in 1968 while at Westminster School in Adelaide, South Australia. Tom and Jean Armstrong had introduced the game to Neil at the school and he quickly became their star pupil.

Neil was chosen to represent Australia at the MacRobertson Shield in 1974, 1979, 1982 and 1986, the latter as captain.  He chose not to travel with the 1979 team for personal reasons.

Neil also represented South Australia on eight occasions, three as captain.

He won ten national titles between 1975 and 1986 including the Australian Open Singles, Australian Men’s Singles, Australian Open Doubles and the English Silver Medal.

In 1987, Neil and his wife, Theresa, moved to California to take up a position as Director of Croquet at Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards after being targeted by the President of the winery for that position.  His duties were to be responsible for the day to day running of the croquet activities and to organize a world class charity croquet tournament each year.  The Sonoma-Cutrer World Championship ran from 1986 to 2004 and was the first international singles event in croquet.

While in America, Neil introduced many people to croquet and coached.  He competed in several tournaments and among his successes were the Arizona Open in 1988 and 1989, the San Francisco Open in 1987, the Meadowood Classic, the Masters of Croquet, the California Open and several other events including the U S Open, which was an event organized by the American Croquet Association.  The ACA was a rival to the USCA and promoted Association Croquet (known as International Rules in the USA) while the USCA promoted the American version of croquet, known as “U.S. Rules”.

Neil became an extremely skilful exponent of U.S. Rules and became the first person to complete a triple peel in that code of the game which is much more difficult than in Association Croquet because of the restrictions on rushing a ball off the boundary.  He completed five U.S. Rules triple peels between 1988 and 1993.  He also became the first and so far only player to complete a three-ball triple peel in U.S. Rules tournament play, once at a Meadowood singles event and again in the Arizona Open.

During the San Francisco Open, Neil managed to defeat one opponent by a score of 26 to 1.  This is a rare feat in US Rules because all players start from a position three feet in front of hoop 1 and can normally expect to score at least two points!  Neil went on to achieve the even more impressive US Rules score line of 26 to 0 - a result referred to today as a "full Spooner" with the 26 - 1 score line being referred to as the "half Spooner".

A warm and engaging man with a well-developed sense of humour, Neil was always prepared to share his knowledge with anyone who cared to ask, irrespective of their level of ability.

David Matthew Caradoc Prichard was born and brought up in Glamorgan on the Prichard family estate.  He was educated at Wellington College, where he played in the 1st XI cricket for two years as a spin bowler, and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.  He was then commissioned into The Royal Welch Fusiliers, in which he served for 25 years in various parts of the British Empire and throughout the Second World War.  He was only the second officer ever to pass both Staff College and Technical Staff College.  He played cricket for the Army and enjoyed polo, hunting and riding in point-to-points.

When David was invalided out of the Army, he moved to Monmouthshire.  He soon discovered croquet and was immediately bitten.  He joined Cheltenham and built his own lawn at his home at Gobion Manor near Abergavenny.  His rise to the A-Class was rapid, winning the D, C, B and A classes in consecutive years at the annual Cheltenham Tournament.  In 1960, he was the first winner of the Apps Bowl, then for the most improved player, and also won his CA Silver Medal.  In 1961, he was selected for the Surrey Cup which he promptly won.  He played in this selection event nine times, winning a record three times, and also played in the Chairman's Salver three times.  He was the runner-up in 1962 Men's Championship to John Solomon and was on the fringe of selection for the 1963 MacRobertson Shield team.

Often accompanied by his wife, Betty, David played widely on the tournament circuit at Budleigh Salterton, Cheltenham, Devonshire Park, Hunstanton, Hurlingham, Nottingham, Roehampton and Southwick.  He played in both the Open Championship and the Men's Championships on about a dozen occasions.  He won many A-Class events, handicap singles and doubles and mixed and open doubles in his career and reached a handicap of -2.5.  This was all achieved despite suffering from a rigid neck caused by spondylitis.  As one of the most experienced referees, he never allowed his condition to interfere with his duties and thought nothing of lying down on his back to judge a wiring decision between his toes!

David undoubtedly put far more back into croquet than he took out through his administrative and other work for the Croquet Association where his orderly mind and wide knowledge proved extremely useful.  He served on the CA Council for over 20 years and as its Chairman from 1968-70.  During that time, he served on the Laws Committee and was its chairman for eight years in two separate terms.  He was also a selector for many years and Chairman of Selectors.  He was chairman of the CA Special Appeals Committee which, unusually, had to meet for three different special appeals during his term.  He was elected a Vice-President of the Croquet Association in 1982.

As chairman of the Laws Committee, David was responsible for the 1972 rewrite of the Laws.  This took months of meetings and copious proof reading and amending.  He introduced the idea of a Commentary on the Laws and wrote four editions of this work. Not content with this, he also rewrote the CA Council rules for conducting meetings and compiled a summary of all important CA Council decisions back to its formation in 1897.

David wrote many technical, legal and administrative articles for the Croquet Gazette, the house magazine of the Croquet Association. However, his final and arguably greatest contribution to croquet was the writing and publication of The History of Croquet in 1981.  This took a couple of years to research and write, entailing many trips to the British Library in Colindale and supported by the erudite assistance of Betty.  It is a very readable account and remains widely accepted as the definitive history of the game in England.  All the proceeds of the sale of the book were donated to the CA.

Not the least of his contributions to croquet came in the form of four A-Class players that he introduced to the game - namely Betty and his three sons!

David Prichard always stood up for the rights of the individual and hated any sort of undercover plot.  As a backbench member of Council, he discovered and nipped in the bud certain underhand or unwise dealings on more than one occasion.  He carefully researched his arguments on most issues and was an unswerving campaigner to maintain Croquet as an amateur sport.  He abhorred any possible misuse or waste of CA funds but gave freely of his time and effort to the CA throughout his time on the croquet scene.  

Although David could appear to be a little intimidating, partly due to his stooped posture from spondylitis and because of a certain gruffness of manner, he had an excellent sense of humour.  Shortly before his death, the Council had decided to allow croquet players to win up to £2,000 per annum in prize money without losing their amateur status.  Despite his well-known opposition to this change, he cheerfully informed another arch-proponent of amateurism at the Cheltenham Club that he had decided to turn professional!

Thomas William (“Tom”) Howat was arguably the best Australian croquet player of his generation.  He won nine Australian Championships between 1955 and 1968, a total which still remains unmatched by a substantial margin.  He was also an excellent coach who freely passed on his knowledge of the game to others.

Tom Howat was a member of Brunswick and Coburg Croquet Clubs in Melbourne. He took up croquet when a pennant standard lawn bowls player.  His wife, Isobel, was a member of Brunswick Croquet Club and, when waiting for her after Bowls, he became intrigued by the techniques, tactics and challenges of the game of Croquet.  Tom was a natural player and quickly progressed through the handicap ranges to become one of Victoria and Australia’s leading players.

Tom also became Croquet Victoria’s first Director of Coaching and was instrumental in organising both the Practical and Theoretical components of its first accreditation course. He also made a major contribution to the development of a coaching video featuring the leading players Allan Cleland and John Tyrell for distribution to clubs.

Tom and Isobel invented the game of King Ball.  This is a single ball game with a croquet stroke after a ball ran the rover hoop that could be used to croquet opposition balls out of play. King Ball was the forerunner of Aussie Croquet, a single ball modified version of Association Croquet, which is now used in schools and clubs throughout Australia to introduce community groups and new club members to croquet.

Tom was noted for his great generosity in passing on his expertise to players throughout Australia. In particular, Tom’s coaching and support of John Tyrell, Alan Cleland, Owen Morgan and George Latham played a significant part in their national and international successes. George and Owen succeeded Tom as Victoria’s Directors of Coaching and his example continues to influence croquet in Victoria and Australia through those whom he coached.

Tom Howat left an outstanding legacy for croquet in Victoria and Australia.

Titles Won by Thomas William Howat:

Australian Singles Championship (The Wall Cup)

1955, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968

Australian Doubles Championship (with Mrs. T.Howat)

1959 and 1965

Australian Men’s Singles Championship

1974

ACC Gold Medal

1956-7, 1963-64, 1965-66, 1968-9, 1970-71, 1972-73, 1975-76, 1979-80

British Silver Medal

1964, 1966, 1967

English Bronze Medal

1957, 1969, 1971, 1976, 1980

Victorian State Singles Championship

1954-5, 1956-7, 1957-8, 1962-3, 1965-6, 1966-7, 1968-9, 1972-3, 1975-6, 1976-7, 1977-8, 1979-80.

Victorian Doubles Championship (with Len Mason)

1971-2, 1972-3

Victorian Interstate TeamMember

1955, 1956, 1957, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1976 (Captain), 1977 (Captain), 1979, 1980

MacRobertson International Shield (played between Australia, England and New Zealand)

1969

Victorian Wren Memorials – Singles

1973-4, 1976-7

Victorian Wren Memorials – Doubles

1969-70, 1976-7 (with Mrs T Howat); 1979-80 (with A. Ford).

 

Jean made a very substantial contribution to croquet over a very long period of time.  Her principal strength was to get new players to begin playing and then to continue to play the game.  She was tenacious and players came under her spell and became determined to do well guided by her expert tuition.  Although a stroke in her nineties meant that she could no longer play or coach, she remained a fount of knowledge of the game until the end of her life.

Jean had an enviable record of success stories with the people she coached.  Altogether, twelve people who had their first game with her went on to become State players.  She and husband Tom spent two years of their lives teaching croquet in colleges and Centres of Adult Education hoping to develop players that would be able to beat England in the MacRobertson Shield.  However, only two first class players emerged in the shape of Neil Spooner and Robert Bartholomaeus.

Between 1969 and 1971, Jean taught croquet five days a week in six colleges.  Saturday matches were organised and the mothers liked this because the croquet court became a social meeting place.  Competitions were arranged at the South Australian Croquet Association Headquarters with as many as 48 turning out on a Saturday morning.

Jean started at Westminster School in 1969.  Six of the boys became croquet players and joined Brighton Croquet Club.  They played in the Pennants and won the Pennant for Brighton but there wasn’t a Pennant for the school.  At SACA headquarters hands went up in horror at the thought of two pennants!  So Barrie Chambers gave one to the school and history was made – a pennant for the Club and a pennant for the School.

Although Jean worked very hard in schools and colleges, she found that it was not a great source of croquet players.  It seemed that the younger a player starts croquet, the earlier they leave the game!  Possibly one reason was that the girls found the clothing restrictions irksome.  One girl was criticized because she went without a hat!

Recruiting new club members was the area where Jean had an amazing record and it is believed that there were about 300 who became registered croquet players through her efforts.  In Jean’s words, “I think the main thing is that once we’ve got them, we haven’t lost them!”

Marion Croquet Club was one of Jean’s crowning glories in recruiting.  The five lawns were first used in February 1983.  Within about nine months, there was a membership of forty, almost thirty of them new to croquet.  At its peak Marion had over 100 members.  First new members were a trickle and then became a flood.  It proved that new players are the best recruiters.  Jean’s first strategic aim was to make the new players enthusiastic.  She did this by playing Golf Croquet until they were hooked and then devoted time to making them knowledgeable in the game.

She had another recruitment triumph in Rockhampton.  She stayed there for six weeks and recruited twelve fully paid-up members who had never thought of playing croquet.  The Club President arranged for her to be interviewed on TV and this certainly helped – as four of the recruits were from the TV station!

Jean had more success at Barmera which was also started from nothing.  The courts were laid, croquet gear was lent to them and soon there were twenty-seven players.

For many years, Jean liaised with what was then known as the National Fitness Council (now Recreation and Sport).  She participated in their Recreation for Housewives Scheme, mostly in the city of Brisbane but, on one occasion, a three-day visit to Barmera was arranged.  There a most enthusiastic group was coached on the Oval and, when the irrigation programme drove them off, Jean persuaded a nearby hotel to lend a piece of ground where a two court complex was laid out.

Jean Armstrong is one of those rare individuals who combined the development of excellence in sport combined with the encouragement of the ‘also rans'.  She did not discriminate between a potential state or international player and a person who had difficulty in walking.  She simply loved Croquet and her enthusiasm was infectious and enduring.

Revised August 2017

Tony Hall has devoted himself to croquet for more than twenty years, both as a player and an administrator.  He served as an active and ambitious President of the World Croquet Federation from 1998 to 2003 and then promptly undertook the role of Treasurer of the Australian Croquet Association from 2004 to 2012.  Before becoming President of the World Croquet Federation, he had served as as President of his club and of the Croquet New South Wales and as the Senior Vice-President of Australian Croquet Association.

Tony spent 38 years in the Australian Army, joining in 1949 and serving overseas in the Antarctic, Malaya, England, Thailand, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea.  He retired as a full Colonel in 1987 and was awarded the OBE. He gained considerable administrative experience both as an officer and from playing and being actively involved in the administration of hockey, squash and swimming.  He helped to start a hockey club, was secretary of the Canberra Veterans Hockey Association for three years and represented his State for ten years.  He served as the treasurer of a squash club for 14 years and spent ten years administering a swimming club in which time he became a senior swimming referee and was made a life member of the club after it became the top club in Australia.  His involvement with swimming also gave him direct experience of high level sports politics with the New South Wales and Australian Swimming Associations.

He took up croquet in 1989 became Secretary of the Canberra Croquet Club within months of joining and then its Treasurer after two years.  As President of Croquet NSW from 1993 to 1996, he visited all NSW clubs, helping to increase membership from 48 to 62 clubs in three years.  During his term as President of the WCF he visited all 24 countries who were then members and ten other potential members.

In 1998 to 2006, he acted as chairman of the first WCF Golf Croquet Rules Committee and then continued to serve as Australia's representative until 2013.  The adoption of the new rules in 2001 are widely regarded as greatly assisting the dramatic increase in the popularity of Golf Croquet all over the world.

On becoming its President, Tony had several ambitions for the WCF. He wanted it to become a genuine international body for croquet, having responsibility for the rules of the games of Association Croquet and Golf Croquet, for organising international competitions and for standardising handicapping and everything that happens on the court.  He also wanted to expand the number of office bearers and officers so that the duties of the Secretary-General could be delegated among a larger number of administrators.  He also performed the duties of the Secretary-General as well as those of the President for one year in the middle of his term before finding a replacement for the inaugural incumbent and a number of other officers.  He saw most of these ambitions realised during his term if office and some of those that remained, such as the management of the Laws of Association Croquet and of the MacRobertson Shield, have since been brought under the WCF umbrella.

Since 1990, Tony travelled around the world every year to play and administer croquet, including attending every World Championship and MacRobertson Shield competition. He played in the Australian Association Croquet Championships every year and has been ranked in the top hundred in the world. He has played in the British, New Zealand, Irish, Canadian, German and United States Association Croquet National Championships and in all other WCF countries with courts, winning the German Open in 2001.  He also won the British GC Open Doubles and won his Australian tracksuit in 1998 to play for Australia in the third Golf Croquet World Championships.  Since then he has since played in five more Golf Croquet World Championships, with a best placing of twentieth.  From 2001 to 2006 he represented NSW in the Australian Interstate Association Croquet Championship and also represented NSW in 2007 and 2008 in the first two Australian Interstate Golf Croquet Championship.  He won the 2002 and 2005 National Golf Croquet Handicap Championship, the 2004 Australian Golf Croquet Open Singles Championship and, in 2005, won the NSW and Queensland Open Singles Association Croquet championships.  While doing all this, he also played hockey with his veterans’ team for twenty years, touring England, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Australia and South America!

Tony also found time to serve for five years as Tournament Referee of the Sonoma-Cutrer World Championships in California and as the Tournament Referee for the 1997 WCF Golf Croquet World Championship at Leamington Spa.  He also acted as a referee in almost all the world level events since then until 2011.

Tony is a widower with three children and seven grandchildren.  He has displayed an extraordinary amount of energy and commitment to croquet and other sports since his retirement in 1989 both as a player and, above all, as an administrator who knew how to run sports bodies to a very high standard.  The world of croquet owes him a considerable debt.

[Updated August 2017]