Can I everyone welcome to conversations. Now, I have to admit I am in awe of our next guest. Now he's a bit younger than I am, but I've been able to follow his career over the years and it's been truly stellar. He graduated as a doctor, worked in the medical profession, played cricket for West Australia, played hockey for Australia, coached Australia to ultimate glory in hockey, served in politics as a politician for ten years, and truly
inspiring man. Rick Charlesworth joins us Rick, how are you.
Very very good? Thanks Cortin What are you doing these days?
I mean, I've kind imagined all the things you've done. How do you keep yourself occupied?
Well, I call myself semi retired, but I've just had a couple of weeks working very hard for as I said to you earlier, the forces of good against evil in the election. But I'm like semi retired, I'm not sort of particularly in last the last few years I've had a full time job. I've been I've been working in China, so that was very interesting. And indeed, last year in August I went to the Olympics in Paris with the Chinese team.
So that was something that I didn't expect.
Yeah, we'll talk about that. But that didn't end well for the Australians because it should beat the Australians in the quarter final. I wondered how that felt, sort of what were your emotions? Are you working for China?
It was it was very well, you know, yes, you've got a job and you're involved in in the caper and so you but I woke up that day going to the quarterfinal knowing that whatever happened, I was going to feel rotten because if China won, that would be nice, but Australia would have lost, and if Australia won, that would have been I would have felt disappointed for the Chinese, you know.
So it's it gets like that.
Yeah, I hadn't you know, I'd always previously been involved with Australia of course, so it was pretty single minded your approach. But you know, the Chinese girls were wonderfully talented, very hard working and a lovely, lovely group to work with you.
So you get attached.
You're assistant coach to Allison and what was it like as an assistant coach A fantastic.
I mean at my age, it was the perfect place to be because it's like all care and no responsibility. I remember I remember speaking to Neil Craig about his time with the Crows when Blight he was the captain. I was the coach and he said to me, well, when you drive out the out of the ground after training or you know, at the end of the day, he said, you just switch on to the family and what's going on there and whatever else might be in
your life. But if you're the head coach, it's twenty four to seven, the phone rings, there's something going on all the time, the media of chasing you. You know, it's a different life. So being assistant coach was much easier at that respect. And you know, I mean Alison I got the job accidentally. I was during COVID. Allison and I were talking on the phone and she said, I've got this job in China. Where don't you come
and help? And I signed up for six months. I said a bit, this will be interesting thing to do. And we spent a lot of time in Europe. And you know, because the Chinese team, they couldn't get around easily. Every time they want to go to another country. They have to sit in China.
For two weeks to get special visas. You know.
It was hard. So, you know, we we built a pretty good team. I think we did three or four things that made a difference. We picked the best team. It probably wasn't happening before we got there. You know, we had players in the end from seven or eight different provinces rather than just two or three ained the blessed and they were training. They used to train two hard, long sessions, dulled, you know, not sharp and vibrant as you need to be in sport.
As you know.
We gave them some consistent messages, you know, and we played lots of international games, so they were very good players, but they only played in China. They didn't have the international experience, you know. And we were we were about fourteenth.
In the world.
Then well we went very close to winning the gold medal.
You lost her in a penalty shootout to to Holland I think.
Was in the final. Yeah.
Is that in the Chinese culture? Is that regarded as a failure or no?
No, no, that was that was a success that they were hopeful to get to the main games. They but but you know, they weren't. They were pretty realistic.
They're there. It's an extraordinary country China.
We misinterpreted, I think dramatically in Australia, and you know, they have done remarkable things of the country. They've raised seven hundred million people out of poverty in fifty years. Just think of that number, seven hundred minion. You know, there's more people in Beijing than there are in Australia. You know, it's eighty times the size of Australia. Just the scale of the thing is extraordinary. You know, it's
a good place to be, wonderful for training. I mean, if you're at the training base in Shanghai or Beijing or Guanzhou. We went to all of them. You know, it's the as times ten.
It makes you wonder, though, when you say things like that about the belligerent rhetoric that some of our politicians have had towards China, what did you think of that?
I think it's nutty and I think you know, the labor government, for instance, has turned that around.
This this is their biggest trading partner.
They haven't been involved in They've had some border skirmishes, they've never sudden any wars in the last hundred years they've been invaded by the Japanese. They've turned their country around the way, which is remarkable.
I was there in the nineties and it was all bicycles.
I was there sort of for the Beijing Olympics, sort of fifteen years later. I thought, gee, this country's moving now. What they've done is staggering. I mean, the country works, you know. I've got friends who have who live there, have got children in Beijing. They said this is the safest city in the world.
You know.
Only the only people have got guns are the coppers, you know. And you know, catch the subway at three o'clock in the morning, and it's adderly and organized. The infrastructure is incredible. There's wind farms as far as the eye can see that, the sky is blue.
They're turning around their pollution. They've done marvelous things. You know.
They produced three times more renewable energy than any other country in the world. You know, and all the electric cars that you see now being available being produced there.
That No, it's a good story.
And they want to trade in the world and they see East Asia. Was there Baliwick, and you know, the USA is ten thousand kilometers away.
It's not their business anyway.
Well, I'm fascinated. But but it's about you, not China, I guess. But if I asked the question, why are you such a high achiever when there must have been a family influence? Tell us about your mum and dad.
Yeah, well I grew up in the least leafy western suburbs, the western suburbs in Perth, of course, you know that like the eastern suburbs in the in the east, the leafy western suburbs of Perth.
We were fortunately my father and my mother were both dentists.
My dad, my dad opened the batting for Western Australia for a short period of time, but just after the war. But of course his best years were during the war, and he liked people of his generation missed out I suppose, but he he was. He was a very good cricketer and his profession was dentistry and in those days. He stopped playing when he was in the early thirties because he had to sort of support the family and run his business.
You know. Mum had we had four Mum had four children, and.
She practiced in dad's practice during the war when he was in the army.
But then she looked after the children we had.
I had a very fortunate upbringing, you know, but the expectation was that you were going to achieve and do well, and we had every opportunity.
You know.
I played sport all the time and I was encouraged to study at school.
You know.
I was actually a rover with the local under fourteen football team Best and Fairest one year, and of course the ruckman in our team won the Brownlow medal.
Who was that played for?
Yeah, but I played I think mossi Ye fancied my sister, So that's one of the reasons I was getting the game.
You know, he's a few years older than me.
But yeah, I actually I did play cricket with Mike Fitzpatrick though at university for a while.
So look, we need to take a break. This is this is going to have to be done in about four or five parts. Rick Charlesworth is my guest today, folks back shortly my guest on conversations is Rick Charlesworth. So many things that he's done. But I was intrigued in the just before the break, you're talking about your dad and your dad served during World War Two? Did you ever find out where?
And I think he went as far as Rottenest when it went to going overseas, you know, yeah, well that there were lots of prisoners over there, and you know he was providing the dental service, you know, so he didn't he didn't.
He wasn't in the infantry or anything. He was obviously in the medical corps.
So I didn't right this down. I was a prison camp.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had had prisoners there that they had collected us. I know, they collected them off German ships and different places, and there were Italians and Germans and Japanese.
Yeah.
So were you one of these kids at school that's good at everything, actually good at it? You know what I mean by that? You've seen these guys who dominate and girls who start.
I was, you know, yeah, like high school I was.
I went to christ Church, which is one of the private schools in the western suburbs of Perth, you know, and I was captain of the cricket team and captain of the hockey team. I didn't I stopped playing footy while I was at high school because I couldn't do.
That and hockey.
And you know, I don't think I was afraid, but I used to get annoyed because I was a busy you know, on baller and you grab the ball out of a pack and some go with shirt front, you you know, and I just thought, I don't know that I want to keep being involved in this, do you know what I mean? It was like you get a couple of concussions and you're thinking, well, in those days, kincashion, there was a loss of consciousness and couldn't remember what
had happened. That was the old definition. Medically now it's a bit more than that. But I suppose I didn't enjoy that much. I thought that was, you know, undesirable. So you know I went for the game which was skill and speed and guile, which was the hockey. And of course in the summer I played cricket.
And why hockey? Was there a mentor there?
Yeah?
It was. It was unique.
You know, hockey wasn't played in primary school, but we had an old teacher, a Welshman who used to play, used to developed a hockey team because we had no other schools to play against. So we used to play against the girls schools, you know, PLC, MLCs and Hilda's all of the girls schools.
That were in the area who were the high school girls.
We were still at primary school and they had the most perfect fields you could imagine grass fields, and we weren't allowed to wear our football boats. We had to play bare feet because we want to dig up the grass. But they were It was the perfect match. We were sort of fifteen year old girls and ten twelve year old boys. We were really well suited, you know, and we used to play sort of twenty sixties a year.
We'd all get in his teacher's car and go to the We drive after school to the to where we were playing, and it was fantastic training, you know, it was special in environment. Indeed, another guy who played with me in the Olympics in Munich had learned his hockey with Thorpe.
He too, Oh, mister Thorpe. It was our mentor there.
It was always a mentor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the year seven teacher.
He was a strict teacher, but I loved him, and you know, I enjoyed the classes, and of course.
Loved the hockey.
I started playing when I was in year three, you know, and so I played all the way through primary school and then joined the local club. And the local club a couple of internationals who were going to the Olympics.
You know, you were you were interacting with.
These people, and the expectation was that, yeah, maybe one day that could happen to me.
You know.
It was seeing people in your local environment doing it, you know. I mean in nineteen sixty Herb Elliot won gold medal at the Olympics and the guy who the guy who ran the local bank down the road who worked in the National Bank was John Winter, who'd won the high jump in London in forty eight. You know, so there's you know, there were expectations that this was this could be done.
But you're balancing a cricket career as well. You're obviously a very good cricketer, So how did you do that?
I you know, cricket was summer. Hockey was winter was easy. They were the days and it was the same everywhere.
You know.
There were you know, in my hockey club was Ross Edwards and Graham Mackenzie. They were both first division players and ross Edwards played for.
Western Australia, you know, so that was the thing.
Barry Shephard, you know, who was the captain of the Australia West Astralian cricket team he was in our hockey club and the club's name was Clermont Cricketers. You know, during the during the winter they played together at hockey.
And then of course there was some of their cricketers. So that was the environment.
It was, I suppose unique and different, but it was where I was, you know, so I was, yeah.
There's hockey a Western Australian thing, is it? So that's where they had the institute of sport they do and especially aligned with that West Australia.
Well yeah, but it was what happened.
Of course, the historical things really quite interesting. I mean the center of hockey in the world was the subcontinent. The Indians and the Pakistanis dominated the game. The British took it there and taught them as they did with you know, soccer all over the world when they built railways. But they took the game across to India and the Indian and the packers. Indian were much much better than them, and they developed the game. They introduced new technology that
changed the shape of the stick. So for the first part of the last century they were the dominant. They won the gold medal at the Olympics eight eight Olympics in a row.
That's how good their domination was.
And when partition occurred in India, and of course lots of Anglo Indians left India and lots of Indians left, they got on boats and they went all over the well. But one of the first places they landed, of course, across the Indian Ocean in Perth. And they went to other parts of Australia and they had an influence, but in lots of them landed in Perth. There was a family, the Pierce brothers, five brothers who all played for Australia, who came from India. And in Perth, we you know
where the sand rapers. We've got a sand plane. So when it rains in the winter, the fields are perfect. They're not muddy like they are in the East. And so you could play hockey really well. You had fast pictures, fast grounds, and those people played for Australia. They developed a culture, the game grew and so Western Australia, for
you know, way up until the eighties dominated the game. Now, of course you've got synthetic pictures, you've got quality pictures all over the country and the games played on synthetic pictures. But you know, the culture here remains. And you know, when in nineteen eighty four I was in the Parliament.
We.
Diversified the Australian Institute of Sports for the first time.
We said, well, we need to have particular sports in.
Particular places, and of course cycling and cricket, for instance, went to Adelaide, and hockey was based in Perth where they had the best pictures, facilities and a really strong local competition, you know, and other states would argue that it should be there now, but that's a historical event
and the facilities of course here are now. And then they're just we've got a money from the state government for a massive new training center, you know, over one hundred million dollars, and so I think it's going to stay here for a while, but they're building something truly international.
You played two undred twenty seven games for Australia. When did you first have that ambition?
Look, I was playing in an environment where I was, you know, training with and seeing these people who were going off to the Olympics. And in nineteen sixty eight, I'm sixteen years old and I watched the Olympics. You just it used to be at the end of the night they would show clips from Mexico, you know, and it would be a fifteen or twenty minute piece and that, you know, and some of our athletes did very well in Mexico. We won the eight hundred meters. I'm trying
to remember the guy's name. I'm having a senior moment now. And rafter Bell, Ralph de Bell won the eight hundred and you know, we had Peter Norman came sickon in
the two hundred and the famous salute. But then at the end of the session they always have a little bit of the hockey and the hockey team beat India for the first time in the semi final and lost in the final to Pakistan because India had become two countries by then, and so you know, they run the silver medal and some of those people I used to know and train with, and I thought, God, in four years time maybe, or in eight years time, I could be there.
You know. Four years later I.
Was first of five.
Yeah.
Rick Charlesworth is my guest on Conversations. We need to take a break, bake shortly, folks. Welcome back to Conversations everybody. If you've just tuned in, I'm chatting with Vic Charlesworth, as I said right at the start, of a man who I've always been in awe of, even though he's a bit younger than me, not a lot younger, just a bit younger. The thing that intrigues me about you, Rick, and indeed other doctors or medical students that I've worked with.
You're able to complete your medical degree, which is a significant time assuming i'd say arduous course, at the same time as having these elite sporting careers. How on earth did you do it? Can I are you one of these really smart people you know that just don't have to study?
No, no, no, I don't know.
That's pretty freakish. There's not many people like that. I had to study, and you know, there's a fair bit of memory work required in getting a medical degree. But you know, I was a good student, and the world was a different place then. But I graduated in nineteen sixty nine. So I started university in nineteen seventy and it wasn't so difficult to get into medicine in those days as it is now, although there was a there was a filter.
So we started.
There were two hundred and sixty of us that started medicine in the first year UWA, and now that I mean, I think there's only about one hundred each year that go through, so you know, but nowadays, of course you're filtered through the ATAR results and all of the other tests and hurdles that young people have to And I've got I've got three children in medicine, so you know, I know how it works. One who's presently a student,
but that's for later on, I imagine. So there were two hundred and sixty of us that started, but the trick was only six you would go into second year, so you had to you had to basically your first year was the filter in those days, you know, so you had to get a's and b's or you didn't get into second year. That's how it worked. And a lot of those people went on and did other things, you know, in science or elsewhere. So that was the trick.
But you're playing first class cricket for WA not.
Yet nineteen seventy, you know, I'm I'm playing, I'm playing in the club competition and I'm playing for university at cricket. That's just the first year out of school and I'm in the I'm on the edge of the state senior team in hockey, you know, and I'm you know, I'm hoping to make do well at cricket, so.
It wasn't the same level. You know.
I trained and played every day, but you know, I did have time to study, and you had to.
You had to, and we did. We did.
We had physics, chemistry, biology, and maths. And I was pretty good at maths, so that wasn't too hard. And I had done physics at school. A lot of the people who went into medicine, of course, didn't have that background. So so I suppose I had you know that that
that was wasn't too big a hurdle. And I'd done chemistry and physics, but I didn't hadn't done any biology at school, you know, because in those days, the good students did physics, chemistry, in maths and one other thing, and I studied German.
You know. It was one of my.
Great regrets, was I loved history and I didn't you didn't get to do it at school because it was a bit narrow, you know.
The education.
Anyway, I I I know, I did pretty well in first year, so I got in the second year. So then you know, then the serious stuff started, I suppose, because then it's lots of you know, you know, the next two years in medicine, there's lots of science, physiology, you know, anatomy really required lots lots of time and energy. And that's when my sporting career was just starting to kick off. So he got busy. In those next two years.
You worked as a doctor too, and they worked interns, for instance, unconscionably.
Hardy's see those days. They certainly did. Yeah, it was a busy, busy time, you know, and so we graduate. I graduated in seventy five, and at the end of seventy five and in seventy six, of course I went off to the Olympics in Montreal halfway through the year. But you know, they were happy to give me time off. You know, as an internet it's usually twelve months work
in the hospital and doing different rotations. And it took me about a year and a half to finish my into and ship because I was then playing cricket and hockey, and the hospital was.
Pretty helpful.
And you know, my fellow fellow young doctors, they were always happy to take a shift for me or something if I had something on and you know, but it cost me, you know, I used to have to pay them for the shift.
Well, you played in three successful Sheffield Chield teams. But it's your hockey career that intrigues me most. You were selected to represent Australia in five Olympic game. Now you didn't go to Moscow because of the but you were captain of a couple of those teams. He won silver in Montreal. Is there a regret there is it? Do you look back on that career as disappointed because there's no gold medal, no Olympic gold medal?
Well, yes, you know, you would have loved that to happen, you know, And you know in the first Olympics I went to in Munich, we finished fifth. I was in an aging team. I was one of the few young people in an aging team. And as usually happened in these things, I think some of the older.
Players held on too long.
And you know, so the team wasn't refreshed, and your team's got to be continually refreshed.
I don't care what it is, you know.
I mean the Adelaide Crows in three years time will have a bunch of people who are different to the ones who were there at the moment, and the teams are constantly being refreshed, and as it was then, I think, you know, that team wasn't refreshed. They took some of the older ones who should and there were young ones who were left behind. Trevor Smith, for instance, from going from South Australia should have been in that team in my view.
And you know, so we were close.
You know, in the last game of the Olympics, we had to beat Holland to get to the semi finals, and they they beat us three to two in a pretty close game, and so we were nearly there, but not quite good enough.
Four years later in Montreal, we had a very young team.
I was the second most experienced player next to Rob Haig, who was of course the captain. He was South Australian and he'd played in me Mexico. And you know, we we beat all of the difficult teams India and Pakistan on the way through. Famously, we beat India six six one. That was the biggest drubbing I think they'd ever had up until then, and we unfortunately slipped over in the in the final, you know, against New Zealand, a team that you know well I played. I played seventeen years
in the national team. We would have played thirty times against New Zealand. That's the only day they ever beat us, you know, so that can happen. But by the time we got to the final, we'd played a couple of extra matches because there were less teams in the other pool, and then we had to play a rapid charge game against India. You didn't have if you were level on points in those days they had you had to play a report change between the last game and the semi finals.
So we had played a couple more games, and we had some injuries and we were tired, So probably that was the difference.
You learn more from your disappointments, your tragedies than you do from your victories, in my assessment, and I wondered what you learned from that which stood you in better stead for your coaching.
Well, yeah, I think I think, you know, when I became a coach, I certainly think that the lessons that I learned as a player over a few decades, we were important and important part of the messages. And you know, and I mean one of my unfailing any player who played one of my teams would tell you the price of life is eternal vigilance. That was one of one of my old medical teachers taught us that, and and I certainly think that yeah, if you you you try
to cover every base. You're diligent about everything that has to happen, you know, and the little things that you miss sometimes are the things that that slip up for you in the in the main game or in the in the big contest.
Had great success with the women's hockey team. I wanted to about that and some of the observations I made during that time, but we'll do that after the break. Rick Charlesworth is my guest, Folks back shortly. My guest on conversation today is Rick Charlesworth's legendary hockey player, hockey coach, cricketer, politician. We probably won't have time to talk about politics, Rix,
but people can go back and research that. Let me just take you back if I can, because when I played footy and when I coached, all our warm ups were done in the room before the game. You have just a handball and you've warm up, and there was never any room to do any warmups. I went through the Olympic Games in Sydney in two thousand and I wanted to see the women's hockey team in action. So I went and watched. I watched the warm up, and I couldn't believe how intense and how long the warm
up was. And now all the players, all teams do it. Now they come out on the ground and then they do intensive warm ups. But it was at an innovative thing that you were doing all those years ago, that intense warm up before a game.
Well, yeah, I think it just makes sense. You know, you have to do things at the tempo of the game before the game or else. The first ten minutes of the game is like warming up, if you like, and the warm up is that preparation. It's physiological. It's about the muscles and the actions that are involved in the game. But so yeah, I think, you know, we we we'd been doing that for some time. I think we did quite a lot of things. Quite a lot of things came from me. If you're like, we're experimental,
but came from my experience. Like we we used to do lots of running without the ball, you know, one hundred eight hundred meters, you know, and traditionally, of course the physiologist that's how they got fit, and that's how they they did all their experiments, but we just played the game and because the best you know, the first rule of physiology is specificity. You have to do what's specific for what you're going to be prepared for. Training
sessions were monitored with the heart rate monitors. Back then we didn't have GPS, and we knew what was required in the game because they were heart rate monitors in the game, and so we replicated that at training plus some Was that.
A traditional thing in hockey? That's such a I've seen it in volleyball as well. But was it a traditional thing when you were playing hockey that you'd have such an extensive warm up?
Yeah, well, yeah, I think it had been for some time. Even when I was a player, we started to do that. We increased the tempo of our warm up, you know, you're talking in the eighties and the nineties, that.
Was increasingly the case.
I mean, if you go back the history of sport, at one stage or other, the team meeting was a thing. You know, before that, there was no team meeting. You went out and just played the game, you know, And through through the years that the people have generally been adding and subtracting and improving and developing so yeah, it was was that was something that you know, had been part of the caper. I think for the period when I was finishing as a player and certainly when I
became involved in coaching, that was the case. As I said, we stopped running at training without the ball. Everything we did was with the ball, you know, and we measured we measured the load, of course, the physiological load from the game, and we replicated it plus ten percent of training.
Obviously, I love the stuff you've done. There was a little segment I saw on your coaching lessons and you had five components. I don't know whether you can recall it. And you talked about quality, you talked about leadership, never compromise, get the culture right. And the fifth one was candor, and I just one intrigued me. Candor expect, brace conflict. Now. I know you're a tough coach. Could you coach the same way today?
Oh?
Yeah, I think you have to, you know, I mean there has to be an expectation of as you've mentioned there, of quality and diligence and all of those things. But I think Canada's critical in families, candace critical in businesses, you know. Jack Welsh wrote a book called Winning one of the best books I've read ever on business, and he said the biggest dirty secret in business is lack of candor.
Although he spelt it wrong because he's American.
He said, it stops good people being promoted, it stops new ideas and decisions coming forward. It's stultifies your organization. And you have to be able to say to people what you think, and you have to be you know, there's a way to do it, and you've got to have difficult conversations with players and with the administration and with it, you know, with your fellow staff at different times. You better develop the skills for being able to do that. If you don't do that, then you're not going to
make progress. And it is a worry sometimes that everybody seems to be becoming more and more precious. But if you're not able to, if you're not doing what the team needs to do, then somebody has to say it.
But but we're talking about as we grew up, there was the Neil Curley's and the Ron Bressis and the Byron Brimstone coaches who would tear strips off you if you do the wrong thing. But the young players today, I don't think tolerate that.
Yeah, well I know, but like I would, I wasn't that sort of a coach. But you know, they need to be hard messages. And those messages sometimes best one on one and sometimes you might do it in the group. You're never going to embarrass or dinner grate pace, but there is an expectation. I mean, the strongest force in your team. That's why you have to get the culture
right is peer pressure. And the players have to hold one another to account and if they aren't, and if they're unwilling to, then you've got a problem.
You know.
I've got a famous quote from zennidin Za Dan saying that, you know, the biggest problem that the team had, and he's talking about Real Madrid here for the season was they were too afraid to confront each other about problems, and so they just drifted and drifted and they had their worst season ever, you know. So and he said there were too many big personalities in the team, we
were too afraid to confront each other. Well, my thing is that there are no big personalities in the team, because if you're a big personality, you need to get involved in those conversations. You want to change what's happening in your team, and so peer pressure is critical and getting that culture right so players can actually you know, demand of each other quality is an important part of it too.
I'm looking at your awards, you know, the West Australia Sportsman of the Year, Avance Australia War, your AM, your AO, You're in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, You've Hockey Australia Hall. You've got all of these accolades, the Australian Sportsmen, a West Australian Citizens of the Year, the Finalist of Australia the Year, the Institute Sport Coach of the Year. Which are those is most precious to you? If at all? Well?
You know, I mean those things come along and it's lovely and you go along to the sermony and the families there, and I think they are they are important, you know, But I suppose you don't. No one aims to do that, you know. I mean I was. I saw my role as a servant of the athletes when I became a coach. You know, my job was to help them realize their potential and I wanted them to be successful and as you know, if they were successful, then you know, I would be seen as being successful.
And so that was And maybe the thing that I'm most proud of is that, you know, because I coached the Hockey Ruse for eight years and then the Cooker Borroughs for six and my time with the Cooker Borrows doesn't seem as being successful, but we had a better
winning record than the Hockey Ruse. And over the six years I was there, we won every tournament except we slipped up one day in the Olympics, you know, and so you know, and that's if you're like tarnished is the record, but we want a winning percentage was better than the Hockey Rows.
You know.
The thing that I'm most proud of, I think is that during my time with the Hockey rus and the Cooker Borroughs, we we played in four World Cups and we won them all.
You know, the hockey rules were sustained by South Australians. You couldn't have done it without South Australia.
We had some wonderful South Australians, you know, Kate Allen, Alison, Alison Peake and Juliet Yeah, they were they were, They were wonderful players. And that was the thing that I was most proud about.
But we played in that time.
In all those sixteen years, we played in twenty five matches which were these are matches you have to win, the semi final, the final of the World Cup, the Olympic Games, the Champions Trophy or the Commonwealth Games. And we played in twenty five of those games and we won twenty four of them. And normally if you win fifty percent, you know, you'd say that's pretty good.
You know, you get to those games and you're going to win something're going to lose some.
So in some ways that's the thing that I'm most proud of that, you know, we turned up for those games during that time and we won nearly all of them.
Like me, you are into your seventies, what is your what is your sporting fix these days? Or how do you satisfy that competitive urge?
Oh?
Look, I love watching watching sport and and you know, I'm not a tribal person.
I'm not.
I don't put on the jumper and go to the game and get carried away like that. But I love to go and watch the contest and to see, you know, brilliant athletes perform brilliantly I mean, there's it's it's been one of these, like the elixirs of my life, and it continued whether you know, I went to see Perth Glory play the other week and they've had a rotten season, but you know, they won that day.
But I enjoyed that. You know.
I love the footy, you know, AFL. I think it's a marvelous competition.
You know, you work for Freo for a while, who do you bury for?
I barrack for free. Oh if I bear it for anybody, I'm.
A bit worried do something about them.
I'm a bit worried.
Well, you know, like just the other week, I mean they they beat Adelaide here and they have what forty points up at three quart a time and one by eighteen, you know, and that just terribly worried me. You know, some of the goals that they got scored against him in the last quarter, you know that like that didn't look to me like they've got the hardness or toughness that their need.
And you need to you know, your forty points up at three quught a time, you need to win by fifty five.
You know, there's something something there that disappointed me.
And you know from the other side.
I mean, I think, you know, Adlai's last quarter was was pretty impressive, you know, but so you know, I only get too carried away with the results. I'm looking at what's inside the game, and I think I think, as a coach, you have to do that too.
So much left still to talk about. It's always great catching up for Thank you so much for your time.
It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Rick Charlesworth was my guest folks, and I realized there was so much we didn't cover. But you can still find these written books. Go read the books. Thank you for joining us.