Bill Mildenhall (born 10 April 1953) is a former

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...

in the National Basketball League who also played

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

with St Kilda in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

(VFL). Mildenhall, who debuted in 1974, made few appearances early in his career due to injury. He had his best seasons in 1976 and 1977, as a

back pocket In the sport of Australian rules football, each of the eighteen players in a team is assigned to a particular named position on the field of play. These positions describe both the player's main role and by implication their location on the gro ...

, playing 40 of a possible 44 games. For the rest of his career he was again in and out of the team, but this time it was because he had taken up basketball refereeing in 1979. Mildenhall refereed in the NBL between 1979 and 2011, and also officiated in the 1992 Barcelona and

2000 Sydney Olympics The 2000 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXVII Olympiad and also known as Sydney 2000 (Dharug: ''Gadigal 2000''), the Millennium Olympic Games or the Games of the New Millennium, was an international multi-sport event held from 1 ...

. In 2005, Mildenhall went past Eddie Crouch's league record of officiating in 802 matches. He also holds the record for being awarded "NBL Referee of the Year" on the most occasions.''The Age'', "NBL shoots for best-of-Asia contest", 16 December 2004, Stephen Howell

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mildenhall, Bill 1953 births St Kilda Football Club players Basketball referees Living people Australian rules footballers from Victoria (state)