World Croquet Federation
Hall of Fame
Tom Armstrong
Born: 26th September 1908
Inducted: 2006
Born in Blyth, Northumberland, England, Tom and his wife Jean migrated to Australia for health reasons and settled in South Brighton, Adelaide where they still live.
He has worked tirelessly, since 1965, to promote croquet in Australia, particularly South Australia.
After viewing the success of the England Mac Robertson Shield side in Australia in 1969, Tom decided to introduce croquet to students at several Adelaide secondary schools. A regular weekly inter-school competition began involving up to 100 teenagers.
From this competition, ten new players joined croquet clubs with several continuing on to win various tournaments. Armstrong was responsible for players such as Neil Spooner, Barrie Chambers, Mark Prater, Bill Smith and many other state and national representatives joining the ranks of croquet players.
For many years he and Jean, would travel to Queensland in the winter months to coach and assist with the recruiting of players for Maryborough and Bundaberg.
Armstrong has given his time freely to anyone who took the slightest interest in the sport of croquet and the folklore at Brighton in Adelaide's southern suburbs says, "that nobody who stopped to peer over the fence at the local club ever escaped the smooth talking Tom Armstrong".
As far as the total number of players introduced to croquet by him, the number is well into the thousands. Many were short term players, but many more were to become long term members at various clubs.
Notable for his innovation, he once roqueted a ball into the jaws of the first hoop and wanted to play a croquet stroke so that his striker's ball could be sent to hoop two. His ingenious solution was to balance it on top of the roqueted ball and played it from there. This manouevre was subsequently outlawed by forcing players to take croquet with the balls on the ground.
Armstrong is a Life Member of the Brighton Croquet Club and was awarded the Australian Sports Medal as part of the Australia Day Award for Sporting Achievement in 2000, and six years before that, the Australian Coaching Council formally recognised his coaching of thousands of players, over almost 50 years.
Tom Armstrong, a croquet enthusiast.