Nicole Jeffery | August 23, 2008
OLYMPIC gold medal-winning coach Ric Charlesworth has declared his interest in taking up the reigns of the Kookaburras when current coach Barry Dancer steps down after the Beijing Games.
After the Kookaburras’ shock semi-final loss to Spain on Thursday night, Charlesworth confirmed that he was keen to guide the Athens gold medallists to London in four years. Dancer announced before the Games began that he would retire from international coaching after the tournament.
Four-times Olympian Charlesworth is Australia’s most successful hockey coach, having led the Hockeyroos to two consecutive gold medals in 1996 and 2000 in his only stint as a national coach.
“There will be a process to go through but I am now unemployed because India has fallen over,” Charlesworth said (he was hired by the International Olympic Committee and International Hockey Federation to get the Indian team back to Olympic level, but found it impossible to do the job within the Indian bureaucracy).
“I have got another burst in me. I have had a break – in the last four years I have been in Italy (on sabbatical), New Zealand (as the cricket high performance manager) and India – so I’m ready to be back in Perth (where the national hockey teams are based).”
Charlesworth has long coveted the national men’s coaching role but the timing has not worked out previously.
He was the preferred candidate to take over the team in 1996 but could not reach an agreement with the national executive because he wanted then-national coach Frank Murray (now the national women’s coach) on his staff.
Instead, he continued on with the women’s team, taking them to a second triumph in Sydney.
He was again in discussions to take over the men’s team in 2001 but needed a year off to refresh himself and did not think it was fair to the team to begin just a few months before the 2002 World Cup.
Dancer took the job that year and guided a new-look team to Australia’s breakthrough victory in Athens, the first Olympic gold medal for the men’s team after 40 years of heartbreak and near-misses.
After that triumph, Dancer’s position was secure for another four years, but now it seems the planets have finally aligned and both Hockey Australia and Charlesworth are on the same page.
Charlesworth has been an interested observer at the Beijing tournament, although old habits die hard. He takes detailed notes on every Australian match, both men and women.
He believes the loss of experienced forward Grant Schubert to a knee injury before the semi-final against Spain may have cost the Kookaburras a chance at a second gold medal. The Australian men led 2-0 against Spain but were overrun, allowing in three late goals.
“With a bit of luck they could be playing in the main game, it’s that close at this level,” he said.
“They didn’t play as well as they could in the semi-final but if you look at the team they were playing, they have some of the best strikers in the world with about 600 games of experience, and we lost Schubert and our young strikers have about 60 games between them, so they are inexperienced.”
Charlesworth also believes the Kookaburras’ soft ride into the semi-finals did not prepare them mentally for the intensity of the semi-final battle.
After big wins against Canada, South Africa and Pakistan, the Australians only needed to draw against the Dutch to qualify for the semi-finals, then played a 3-3 dead rubber against Great Britain.
“They had an easy ride through and sometimes that doesn’t prepare you for the toughness of what’s ahead, whereas both Germany and Spain struggled in their pool games but came through.”
Germany and Spain will meet in tonight’s final, while Australian and The Netherlands will play for the bronze medal.
Dancer has called on his players to rebound from their disappointment and produce a performance worthy of their talents in their last appearance as a team. Captain Bevan George and senior defender Matthew Wells are among the players who have already declared they will retire after the Games.
“I think this is the last opportunity for a number of these players to play together and it would be gut-wrenching for them to come away with nothing, it’s gut-wrenching enough to lose this match (the semi-final),” Dancer said.
“I have faith in this team to lift itself for the next match.
“We didn’t play particularly well against Britain and some of what we saw in that match was in this game as well. We need to re-establish our belief and that will be the difference after this loss tonight. We need to remind our players of their strengths.”
The women’s team rebounded from its disappointment at missing the semi-finals to win the play-off for fifth, 2-0, from Great Britain.
Charlesworth said the women’s team had also been unlucky.
“They are good enough to win a medal and they played well enough and they missed out on goal difference (to China),” he said.