Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

Two months into the job, a drawn series against a ‘very fast, athletic and skilled’ Korean team in Sydney convinced him of the need for a number of faster players and greater flexibility in the play of individuals, to enable the team as a whole ‘to cope with the variety of ways of playing worldwide’. The individuals he found, the playing structures he devised and the training programmes he introduced, for an eventual total of 54 players, produced unprecedented success between 1993 and 2000. Starting with first place in the Champions Trophy in the Netherlands in August 1993, the team that became known as the ‘Hockeyroos’ a year later went on to win gold medals in the World Cups of 1994 and 1998, the Olympic Games in 1996 and 2000 and the Commonwealth Games in 1998. Numerous other international tournaments in Australia, Europe, South-East Asia, South America, Canada, India, South Africa and New Zealand brought only 30 defeats in 253 games, with 198 victories and 25 draws. In 30 Olympic Games and World Cups only one match was lost; only three in the same number of Champions trophies. Success had earned Ric a reputation as a hard, exacting coach. He didn’t deny some aspects of this charge, but also presented himself as the antithesis of a dictator. He claimed credit especially for ‘developing an ethic of training’: ‘our training was designed to be physically, mentally and tactically more complex and difficult 66 1993-2002 Ric Charlesworth with his daughters Kate and Libby during the run-up to the Sydney Olympics.