Kookaburras Aim To Stay At Treetop
The Sunday Age
Sunday November 6, 2005
The Kookaburras have chased other goals since Olympic glory, but with a series of events nearing, it's time to refocus, writes Samantha Lane
THERE have been changes to Australia's men's hockey team since it won gold in Athens just over 14 months ago. Serious changes. But when the Kookaburras checked in with each other recently for the first time post-Olympics, those differences would not have been immediately apparent.Today they will gather in Queensland to begin a week-long training camp before World Cup qualifiers in Fiji later this month. Twelve members of the 16-man 2004 Olympic team will be there, meaning the changes have not been to personnel as much as to the personnel's lifestyles."Everyone was just putting everything off until after Athens, and now it's over, people have got married, had children, bought houses," Stephen Mowlam, the Kookaburras' gold medallist goalkeeper and now fledgling structural engineer, said before reuniting with his old team-mates."So instead of being students and part-time workers, we've all chased careers and things like that. I think the dynamics of the whole group has changed in the sense that we've all got other things outside of hockey, too, which are really important."The Kookaburras' first reunion was in July, before their injury-depleted side finished second in the Rabo Trophy and the Hamburg Masters in August. Midfielders Nathan Eglington and Michael Boyce missed that European series due to injury, but will soon give national coach Barry Dancer a full-strength squad to work with. "So, it will be the first time we've really come together as a team injury-free and as the No. 1 team since Athens. So it's going to be a massive time for us," Victorian Mowlam said. Dancer will use this week to re-acquaint his players with the strategies and goals the Kookaburras used to end a 48-year wait for a gold medal in Australian men's hockey. But while it would seem Dancer has a team of satisfied Olympic champions on his hands, Mowlam - aged 28, but yet to play in a World Cup or Commonwealth Games - says there are plenty of challenges to drive the team on.The Kookaburras are favourites against New Zealand and Fiji in the Oceania qualifiers and, results pending, will travel to Germany next year for the World Cup. They will contest the men's Champions Trophy in India this December before defending their gold medal at the Commonwealth Games."The biggest test for us now is what's coming up," Mowlam said. "It's all well and good to be a young team chasing teams that are considered to be better than you and being hungry and things like that. But the next challenge - and a much harder challenge - is taking a team in which the demographic has changed and priorities have changed slightly, and seeing if we can achieve what we're saying we can. "We will know where we're at around about Christmas time, and hopefully we're still the best team. But I don't think we'll be the best team by a long way because other teams have worked out what we did and they're starting to put that in place."While most observers saw the Olympic breakthrough as the end of a prolonged drought, the Kookaburras' players view it as the beginning of something greater."We want to become a dynasty team, rather than looking back," Mowlam said. "We were young going into Athens, and people said, 'The monkey's off your back' and all that sort of stuff. But if the truth be known, there was only, I think, three players that had gone to previous Olympic Games. We didn't even think about that stuff. We were just trying to win and have fun, and it came off."But the revelry can only continue for so long. "I've gone to so many functions where you speak about it and you're patted on the back. It's a solid 12 months later, and there are still people talking about it, whereas I am more focused on what's coming up," Mowlam said. "It's not that you're over it, it's more that we want to have that feeling again, in Comm Games and World Cup and the next Olympic Games in Beijing."
© 2005 The Sunday Age