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Touchline – Your CV is pretty
impressive. You’ve been a
first class cricket player, top
hockey player and coach and
an Australian Federal MP.
That’s pretty amazing! What do
you consider to be your most
significant achievement?
Ric Charlesworth
– I’m the father
of 5 children!
I’ve done a range of things; I’maMedical
Practitioner too. The one constant
thread that has run through my life and
my one great passion has been hockey.
I fell into coaching, almost accidently
really. It’s not something that I planned,
but I’ve been doing it now for 20 years.
I had a career playing for 16 years. It’s
a game that I love. One of the things
I like about it, whether men or women
are playing, the rules are the same, and
it’s a game which is based on skill and
speed, not necessarily physical brawn,
although you need physical courage
to play, which is, I think, an important
element of good competitive sport.
Hockey becomes the focus of
attention every Olympic year
but it doesn’t seem to maintain
that level of excitement or
focus after the games. Why do
you think that is?
Yes, and indeed at the Sydney
Olympics hockey had the third most
spectators at any event and I think that
will be the same in London.
The main problem is the media – there
are more people covering the AFL
(Australian Football League) than there
are players playing, so to get a story
on our sport is pretty difficult. There
are still 150,000 players in our county,
so there’s still a lot of interest. It’s a
spectacular game, and I think they’ve
got the rules about right now, it’s as
fast as any game you’ll see and the
skill that is displayed is exceptional, but
how do you break that cycle? We can’t
get a main sponsor because we aren’t
on TV, but without a main sponsor we
can’t get on TV.
Maybe in the past it was too technical
perhaps. Now they are better at
covering it. The International Hockey
Federation has a group of cameramen
going around the world filming the
competitions. It’s fast, but it flows
almost as well as any other game you
can imagine. They’ve got the rules
right, and it’s been progressive.
To what do you attribute the
success in growing talent in
Australia?
We get first choice athletes and we play
the sport in every state. We have this
culture of good teams, and I think we
have good coaching practices. I think
a number of the innovations that have
been done in team sport have been
done in our sport first because of the
people that we have had involved, and
that grows on itself. You’ve got to be
constantly vigilant if you want to keep
being good.
How does this team compare to
teams of the past that you have
coached and even teams that
you played in?
INTERVIEW WITH KOOKABURRAS COACH
RIC CHARLESWORTH
Touchline interviewed Dr Richard (‘Ric’) Charlesworth,
Coach for the Kookaburras – the Australian men’s
hockey team. Ric is one of the most successful coaches
in hockey. He was named Team Coach of the Year in
1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. Coach of the
Year in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997,1998, 1999 and 2000.
He was also named the Confederation of Australian
Sport’s Coach of the Year in 1996, 1997 and 2000.
Ric was the first person to have played and coached
a gold medal winning World Cup team in Hockey. He
also won the Australia Institute of Sport (AIS) Coach of
the Year 2010. Ric was with the team in preparation for
the 2012 Olympics in London.
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