Plenty of worth in coach poach

Ron Reed

October 04, 2008 12:00am

GREG Chappell and Ric Charlesworth, contemporaries on the first-class cricket scene three decades ago, have had something else to talk about lately.

Charlesworth was installed this week as the new coach of the Australian men’s hockey team, the Kookaburras, after resigning in frustrating circumstances from his most recent job as technical director of that sport in India.

Chappell, as has been well documented, also fell out with his Indian employers after two years as their cricket coach.

He recently became head coach of Cricket Australia’s Centre of Excellence.

As befits two true superstars of Australian sport, both have been welcomed back enthusiastically.

While Charlesworth’s appointment created barely a ripple in the media, it’s very good news for hockey and the Olympic family in general.

The Australian Olympic Committee – and the Paralympians, too – have concluded in recent years that finding the right coaches and, more importantly, keeping them, is as important as unearthing talented athletes.

President John Coates made that point – again – in Beijing recently when warning that more funding would be needed to keep pace with Great Britain in London in 2012.

For some time, the British have been ploughing huge money into poaching coaches, especially ours, in a range of sports, and their much-improved performance in China suggests it has been money well spent.

Not that Australia has been hiding behind the door in this cloak-and-dagger game.

Coates admitted this week that we signed up 200 coaches from all over the globe before the Sydney Games in 2000, and many are still on board – for instance, pole vault gold medallist Steve Hooker’s Russian mentor Alex Parnov.

Coates’ British counterpart, Lord Moynihan, visited him this week and promised not to pinch any more coaches.

However, a strong rumour is doing the rounds that, in fact, approaches have been made to canoe/kayak husband-and-wife coaching team Richard and Myriam Fox, who oversaw a five-medal blinder in Beijing.

It’s a good time to be a coach – as long as you’re a winner.

It’s only just over a month since Beijing, but the game of musical chairs is already in full swing.

Most notably, perhaps, head track and sprint cycling coach Martin Barras appears to have paid the price for track cycling’s Olympic wipe-out, having been offered a new role that has not yet been made public.

High-profile swimmers Libby Trickett, Jessicah Schipper and Kenrick Monk have changed coaches, while rowing and track and field have made major changes.

Rowing, ironically, is holding a coaching talkfest on the Gold Coast this weekend, with the keynote speaker being Australian Paul Thompson, now coaching the Brits, who topped the rowing medal tally in Beijing.

And now there’s Charlesworth, whose profile and respect have always been in keeping with his reputation as a serial over-achiever.

He was a decent-enough opening bat for Western Australia and then became the world’s best hockey player across four Olympics, later coaching the Australian women’s team, the Hockeyroos, to gold medals in Atlanta and Sydney.

He has worked as a mentor to five national team coaches at the Institute of Sport and with the Fremantle footy club, New Zealand cricket and Indian hockey, as well as writing several books, practising as a doctor and spending 10 years in federal Parliament.

Now, at 56, he is finally back where he has wanted to be for a long time now – with his first and greatest sporting love. The Kookaburras are laughing.

reedr@heraldsun.com.au