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I think the players are getting better all
the time. I watch sometimes at training
and I’m amazed at what they can do.
We were good, they are much better.
Given another time and another era,
and the opportunities and equipment
that are available, I’m sure that the
players of the past would have been
much better too.
I think the game continuously develops.
Talented people - that’s been the key to
us having good national teams during
the time that I played and now.
Jamie Dwyer would probably be
opening the batting for Australia if he
wasn’t doing what he’s doing now. He’s
a very gifted athlete in whatever he’s
doing, but he’s not Robinson Crusoe in
our team, there are others in the team
as well.
So what do you consider the
team’s chances of winning the
gold at the Olympics to be?
I don’t know. We’re good enough to, if
we play as well as we can, but you can
run into a disaster and things can go
wrong pretty quickly and I understand
that. I played in a bunch of teams
that didn’t win the major competitions
for various reasons. It comes down
sometimes to just a few moments in a
critical match.
The world record holder and the world
champion win just one event in four at
the Olympics, so the other 3 are won by
someone else. The guy that’s ranked
10th in the world only wins about 7%
so I’d rather be in with a 25% chance
rather than a 7% chance! We’ve lost to
everybody ranked in the first 10. On any
day that can happen. What you do in
your preparation is that you make sure
you can cover every base and that you
have contingencies and that the teams
resilient. At the Olympics we have to
play 7 games in 13 or 14 days. It’s an
endurance event as much as anything
else – if you lose a couple of players
early on, you’re limited. We got to the
final event in the Montreal Olympics
and we had played 2 more games than
the team we played in the final because
there had been a boycott in the other
side of the pool. You do everything you
can to cover your contingencies, and
by the time we get on the plane to go to
London most of the things that we can
do in preparation will be done. If you
lose half way through the tournament,
it can be debilitating, but you have to
get up 2 days later and play again.
You’ve had unprecedented
success in coaching, what do
you put that down to?
I think – I hope – that I learnt a lot from
all the teams I played in – learnt from
all the mistakes that were made, and
that I’ve made over my period of time
and we would hope to avoid those. I’ve
been lucky – I’ve had good athletes
and you can’t win unless you have
that. I suppose the bit that I can take
the credit for is the sustained success
of the group and hopefully you do it
because they do prepare well. We
have deliberately built a deep squad
going into these Olympics so if we lose
someone important we are still going
to be good. Not relying on just a few
– you have to have the depth, and work
hard at that and hopefully there will be
a dividend in doing so.
Iheardsomewherethatyou have
never lost a major tournament
with the Kookaburras. Is that
right?
We lost plenty of games, and we’ve
lost some tournaments, but at the main
ones we’ve been successful. So yes.
For 8 years we were number one and
I didn’t think that was possible when
I first started. We always thought we
were good enough to win the main
competitions, we had enough talent
to allow us to win, but whether or not
you could maintain that quality over a
length of time, I was never sure about
that. You hope that you can get it right,
but everyone else is watching you and
learning from you, and they all want to
beat you.
Do the distances involved in
coaching an Australian team
make communication difficult?
It can, one-third of my team is in Europe
playing the domestic competition over
there. I guess that makes it harder with
the Kookaburras than the Hockeyroos
as they don’t have that. Much harder
to get them together and spend time
together than it was with the girls. Last
year we spent some time in Europe
watching them play in their clubs, so I
guess we have had to change the way
we do it.
Do you change your strategy
depending on the team you’re
playing, or do you go out there
and say we will continue to play
our game?
That’s an old coaching conundrum, that
is! You make a mistake if you react too
muchtoanopposition,but youhadbetter
also be wary of what their strengths are
and how to deal with their players. You
have to understand the peculiarities
of each team. One of the difficulties of
this sport is that one day we’re playing
Spain, the next day we’re playing India,
then Korea, then Argentina. They
are all different, Germany and Great
Britain are significantly different in their
mentality and the way they approach
the game, so you have to deal with that
appropriately. We had a meeting today,
and we were talking about Germany
and how we might play against them,
that’s a continuous process that goes
on. The big dilemma as a coach is that
there’s no point in me knowing that stuff
– the players actually have to know it to
be able to do it out on the field. There
has to be practical applicability for them
for that stuff.
Good luck in London.
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