Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

further lose out on their childhoods.’ The split in his marriage, he said in 2009, was amicable. Divorce came only when Frances wanted to re-marry. He respected the way she had brought up their children and had always remained on good terms with them. They spent every weekend with him when he was in Perth and their weekdays with Frances. * * * * * Deciding in mid-1992 that he wouldn’t contest the next election, due in six to nine months time, Ric was still uncertain what he would do after politics. Returning to medicine was one possibility, further study or writing were two others. In September 1992 a phone call from Sharon Buchanan, captain of the Australian women’s hockey team, changed his mind and his life. She asked him if he was willing to apply for the soon-to-be-advertised job as coach of the Australian women’s hockey team. This was ‘an option from left field’. His coaching experience before entering politics was extensive but largely at levels far below international standards: with under-14 teams for the Cricketers club in the early 1970s, senior ones from 1976 to 1979 and the state under-21 teams in 1977 and 1978. But in the past couple of years it had been confined to the Westside Wolves under-13s and the under-15s, where his daughter Kate was a player. His only commitment was to assist Stephen Smith, who had been preselected as ALP candidate for Perth: he ‘felt obliged to ensure that the seat remained safe for Labor.’ Smith, until then state secretary of the party, was duly elected, beginning a career in Canberra that led eventually to the position of minister for foreign affairs in the Rudd ALP government elected in 2007. Ric Charlesworth decided to apply for the coaching position, even though both the incumbent and his assistant were applicants. In his first-ever formal job interview he wasn’t nervous, having decided ‘to say what I thought’, so ‘they knew what they’d be getting; there would be no misunderstanding’. With a confidence no doubt rooted in his peerless reputation as a player and his ten years mixing with the movers and shakers of both national and sporting politics, he expected to get the job. Women’s Hockey Australia agreed he should start immediately after the next federal election. When he began in March 1993 ‘little did I 1981-1993 63