Speaker 1: Can I everyone welcome to conversations. Now, I have to
Speaker 1: admit I am in awe of our next guest. Now
Speaker 1: he's a bit younger than I am, but I've been
Speaker 1: able to follow his career over the years and it's
Speaker 1: been truly stellar. He graduated as a doctor, worked in
Speaker 1: the medical profession, played cricket for West Australia, played hockey
Speaker 1: for Australia, coached Australia to ultimate glory in hockey, served
Speaker 1: in politics as a politician for ten years, and truly
Speaker 1: inspiring man. Rick Charlesworth joins us Rick, how are you.
Speaker 2: Very very good? Thanks Cortin What are you doing these days?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've kind imagined all the things you've done.
Speaker 1: How do you keep yourself occupied?
Speaker 3: Well, I call myself semi retired, but I've just had
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks working very hard for as I
Speaker 3: said to you earlier, the forces of good against evil
Speaker 3: in the election. But I'm like semi retired, I'm not
Speaker 3: sort of particularly in last the last few years I've
Speaker 3: had a full time job. I've been I've been working
Speaker 3: in China, so that was very interesting. And indeed, last
Speaker 3: year in August I went to the Olympics in Paris
Speaker 3: with the Chinese team.
Speaker 2: So that was something that I didn't expect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk about that. But that didn't end well
Speaker 1: for the Australians because it should beat the Australians in
Speaker 1: the quarter final. I wondered how that felt, sort of
Speaker 1: what were your emotions? Are you working for China?
Speaker 3: It was it was very well, you know, yes, you've
Speaker 3: got a job and you're involved in in the caper
Speaker 3: and so you but I woke up that day going
Speaker 3: to the quarterfinal knowing that whatever happened, I was going
Speaker 3: to feel rotten because if China won, that would be nice,
Speaker 3: but Australia would have lost, and if Australia won, that
Speaker 3: would have been I would have felt disappointed for the Chinese,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So it's it gets like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hadn't you know, I'd always previously been involved
Speaker 3: with Australia of course, so it was pretty single minded
Speaker 3: your approach. But you know, the Chinese girls were wonderfully talented,
Speaker 3: very hard working and a lovely, lovely group to work
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: So you get attached.
Speaker 1: You're assistant coach to Allison and what was it like
Speaker 1: as an assistant coach A fantastic.
Speaker 3: I mean at my age, it was the perfect place
Speaker 3: to be because it's like all care and no responsibility.
Speaker 3: I remember I remember speaking to Neil Craig about his
Speaker 3: time with the Crows when Blight he was the captain.
Speaker 3: I was the coach and he said to me, well,
Speaker 3: when you drive out the out of the ground after
Speaker 3: training or you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: he said, you just switch on to the family and
Speaker 3: what's going on there and whatever else might be in
Speaker 3: your life. But if you're the head coach, it's twenty
Speaker 3: four to seven, the phone rings, there's something going on
Speaker 3: all the time, the media of chasing you. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a different life. So being assistant coach was much
Speaker 3: easier at that respect. And you know, I mean Alison
Speaker 3: I got the job accidentally. I was during COVID. Allison
Speaker 3: and I were talking on the phone and she said,
Speaker 3: I've got this job in China. Where don't you come
Speaker 3: and help? And I signed up for six months. I
Speaker 3: said a bit, this will be interesting thing to do.
Speaker 3: And we spent a lot of time in Europe. And
Speaker 3: you know, because the Chinese team, they couldn't get around easily.
Speaker 3: Every time they want to go to another country. They
Speaker 3: have to sit in China.
Speaker 2: For two weeks to get special visas. You know.
Speaker 3: It was hard. So, you know, we we built a
Speaker 3: pretty good team. I think we did three or four
Speaker 3: things that made a difference. We picked the best team.
Speaker 3: It probably wasn't happening before we got there. You know,
Speaker 3: we had players in the end from seven or eight
Speaker 3: different provinces rather than just two or three ained the
Speaker 3: blessed and they were training. They used to train two hard,
Speaker 3: long sessions, dulled, you know, not sharp and vibrant as
Speaker 3: you need to be in sport.
Speaker 2: As you know.
Speaker 3: We gave them some consistent messages, you know, and we
Speaker 3: played lots of international games, so they were very good players,
Speaker 3: but they only played in China. They didn't have the
Speaker 3: international experience, you know. And we were we were about fourteenth.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 3: Then well we went very close to winning the gold medal.
Speaker 1: You lost her in a penalty shootout to to Holland
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Was in the final. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that in the Chinese culture? Is that regarded as
Speaker 1: a failure or no?
Speaker 3: No, no, that was that was a success that they
Speaker 3: were hopeful to get to the main games. They but
Speaker 3: but you know, they weren't. They were pretty realistic.
Speaker 2: They're there. It's an extraordinary country China.
Speaker 3: We misinterpreted, I think dramatically in Australia, and you know,
Speaker 3: they have done remarkable things of the country. They've raised
Speaker 3: seven hundred million people out of poverty in fifty years.
Speaker 3: Just think of that number, seven hundred minion. You know,
Speaker 3: there's more people in Beijing than there are in Australia.
Speaker 3: You know, it's eighty times the size of Australia. Just
Speaker 3: the scale of the thing is extraordinary. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a good place to be, wonderful for training. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you're at the training base in Shanghai or Beijing
Speaker 3: or Guanzhou. We went to all of them. You know,
Speaker 3: it's the as times ten.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder, though, when you say things like
Speaker 1: that about the belligerent rhetoric that some of our politicians
Speaker 1: have had towards China, what did you think of that?
Speaker 3: I think it's nutty and I think you know, the
Speaker 3: labor government, for instance, has turned that around.
Speaker 2: This this is their biggest trading partner.
Speaker 3: They haven't been involved in They've had some border skirmishes,
Speaker 3: they've never sudden any wars in the last hundred years
Speaker 3: they've been invaded by the Japanese. They've turned their country
Speaker 3: around the way, which is remarkable.
Speaker 2: I was there in the nineties and it was all bicycles.
Speaker 3: I was there sort of for the Beijing Olympics, sort
Speaker 3: of fifteen years later. I thought, gee, this country's moving now.
Speaker 3: What they've done is staggering. I mean, the country works,
Speaker 3: you know. I've got friends who have who live there,
Speaker 3: have got children in Beijing. They said this is the
Speaker 3: safest city in the world.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Only the only people have got guns are the coppers,
Speaker 3: you know. And you know, catch the subway at three
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning, and it's adderly and organized. The
Speaker 3: infrastructure is incredible. There's wind farms as far as the
Speaker 3: eye can see that, the sky is blue.
Speaker 2: They're turning around their pollution. They've done marvelous things. You know.
Speaker 3: They produced three times more renewable energy than any other
Speaker 3: country in the world. You know, and all the electric
Speaker 3: cars that you see now being available being produced there.
Speaker 2: That No, it's a good story.
Speaker 3: And they want to trade in the world and they
Speaker 3: see East Asia. Was there Baliwick, and you know, the
Speaker 3: USA is ten thousand kilometers away.
Speaker 2: It's not their business anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm fascinated. But but it's about you, not China,
Speaker 1: I guess. But if I asked the question, why are
Speaker 1: you such a high achiever when there must have been
Speaker 1: a family influence? Tell us about your mum and dad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I grew up in the least leafy western suburbs,
Speaker 3: the western suburbs in Perth, of course, you know that
Speaker 3: like the eastern suburbs in the in the east, the
Speaker 3: leafy western suburbs of Perth.
Speaker 2: We were fortunately my father and my mother were both dentists.
Speaker 3: My dad, my dad opened the batting for Western Australia
Speaker 3: for a short period of time, but just after the war.
Speaker 3: But of course his best years were during the war,
Speaker 3: and he liked people of his generation missed out I suppose,
Speaker 3: but he he was. He was a very good cricketer
Speaker 3: and his profession was dentistry and in those days. He
Speaker 3: stopped playing when he was in the early thirties because
Speaker 3: he had to sort of support the family and run
Speaker 3: his business.
Speaker 2: You know. Mum had we had four Mum had four children, and.
Speaker 3: She practiced in dad's practice during the war when he
Speaker 3: was in the army.
Speaker 2: But then she looked after the children we had.
Speaker 3: I had a very fortunate upbringing, you know, but the
Speaker 3: expectation was that you were going to achieve and do well,
Speaker 3: and we had every opportunity.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I played sport all the time and I was encouraged
Speaker 3: to study at school.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I was actually a rover with the local under fourteen
Speaker 3: football team Best and Fairest one year, and of course
Speaker 3: the ruckman in our team won the Brownlow medal.
Speaker 2: Who was that played for?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I played I think mossi Ye fancied my sister,
Speaker 3: So that's one of the reasons I was getting the game.
Speaker 2: You know, he's a few years older than me.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I actually I did play cricket with Mike
Speaker 3: Fitzpatrick though at university for a while.
Speaker 1: So look, we need to take a break. This is
Speaker 1: this is going to have to be done in about
Speaker 1: four or five parts. Rick Charlesworth is my guest today,
Speaker 1: folks back shortly my guest on conversations is Rick Charlesworth.
Speaker 1: So many things that he's done. But I was intrigued
Speaker 1: in the just before the break, you're talking about your
Speaker 1: dad and your dad served during World War Two? Did
Speaker 1: you ever find out where?
Speaker 3: And I think he went as far as Rottenest when
Speaker 3: it went to going overseas, you know, yeah, well that
Speaker 3: there were lots of prisoners over there, and you know
Speaker 3: he was providing the dental service, you know, so he
Speaker 3: didn't he didn't.
Speaker 2: He wasn't in the infantry or anything. He was obviously
Speaker 2: in the medical corps.
Speaker 1: So I didn't right this down. I was a prison camp.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had had prisoners there that they
Speaker 3: had collected us. I know, they collected them off German
Speaker 3: ships and different places, and there were Italians and Germans
Speaker 3: and Japanese.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So were you one of these kids at school that's
Speaker 1: good at everything, actually good at it? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean by that? You've seen these guys who dominate
Speaker 1: and girls who start.
Speaker 2: I was, you know, yeah, like high school I was.
Speaker 3: I went to christ Church, which is one of the
Speaker 3: private schools in the western suburbs of Perth, you know,
Speaker 3: and I was captain of the cricket team and captain
Speaker 3: of the hockey team. I didn't I stopped playing footy
Speaker 3: while I was at high school because I couldn't do.
Speaker 2: That and hockey.
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't think I was afraid, but
Speaker 3: I used to get annoyed because I was a busy
Speaker 3: you know, on baller and you grab the ball out
Speaker 3: of a pack and some go with shirt front, you
Speaker 3: you know, and I just thought, I don't know that
Speaker 3: I want to keep being involved in this, do you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? It was like you get a
Speaker 3: couple of concussions and you're thinking, well, in those days, kincashion,
Speaker 3: there was a loss of consciousness and couldn't remember what
Speaker 3: had happened. That was the old definition. Medically now it's
Speaker 3: a bit more than that. But I suppose I didn't
Speaker 3: enjoy that much. I thought that was, you know, undesirable.
Speaker 3: So you know I went for the game which was
Speaker 3: skill and speed and guile, which was the hockey. And
Speaker 3: of course in the summer I played cricket.
Speaker 1: And why hockey? Was there a mentor there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It was. It was unique.
Speaker 3: You know, hockey wasn't played in primary school, but we
Speaker 3: had an old teacher, a Welshman who used to play,
Speaker 3: used to developed a hockey team because we had no
Speaker 3: other schools to play against. So we used to play
Speaker 3: against the girls schools, you know, PLC, MLCs and Hilda's
Speaker 3: all of the girls schools.
Speaker 2: That were in the area who were the high school girls.
Speaker 3: We were still at primary school and they had the
Speaker 3: most perfect fields you could imagine grass fields, and we
Speaker 3: weren't allowed to wear our football boats. We had to
Speaker 3: play bare feet because we want to dig up the grass.
Speaker 3: But they were It was the perfect match. We were
Speaker 3: sort of fifteen year old girls and ten twelve year
Speaker 3: old boys. We were really well suited, you know, and
Speaker 3: we used to play sort of twenty sixties a year.
Speaker 3: We'd all get in his teacher's car and go to
Speaker 3: the We drive after school to the to where we
Speaker 3: were playing, and it was fantastic training, you know, it
Speaker 3: was special in environment. Indeed, another guy who played with
Speaker 3: me in the Olympics in Munich had learned his hockey
Speaker 3: with Thorpe.
Speaker 2: He too, Oh, mister Thorpe. It was our mentor there.
Speaker 1: It was always a mentor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the year seven teacher.
Speaker 3: He was a strict teacher, but I loved him, and
Speaker 3: you know, I enjoyed the classes, and of course.
Speaker 2: Loved the hockey.
Speaker 3: I started playing when I was in year three, you know,
Speaker 3: and so I played all the way through primary school
Speaker 3: and then joined the local club. And the local club
Speaker 3: a couple of internationals who were going to the Olympics.
Speaker 2: You know, you were you were interacting with.
Speaker 3: These people, and the expectation was that, yeah, maybe one
Speaker 3: day that could happen to me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was seeing people in your local environment doing it,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean in nineteen sixty Herb Elliot won
Speaker 3: gold medal at the Olympics and the guy who the
Speaker 3: guy who ran the local bank down the road who
Speaker 3: worked in the National Bank was John Winter, who'd won
Speaker 3: the high jump in London in forty eight. You know,
Speaker 3: so there's you know, there were expectations that this was
Speaker 3: this could be done.
Speaker 1: But you're balancing a cricket career as well. You're obviously
Speaker 1: a very good cricketer, So how did you do that?
Speaker 3: I you know, cricket was summer. Hockey was winter was easy.
Speaker 3: They were the days and it was the same everywhere.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There were you know, in my hockey club was Ross
Speaker 3: Edwards and Graham Mackenzie. They were both first division players
Speaker 3: and ross Edwards played for.
Speaker 2: Western Australia, you know, so that was the thing.
Speaker 3: Barry Shephard, you know, who was the captain of the
Speaker 3: Australia West Astralian cricket team he was in our hockey
Speaker 3: club and the club's name was Clermont Cricketers. You know,
Speaker 3: during the during the winter they played together at hockey.
Speaker 2: And then of course there was some of their cricketers.
Speaker 2: So that was the environment.
Speaker 3: It was, I suppose unique and different, but it was
Speaker 3: where I was, you know, so I was, yeah.
Speaker 1: There's hockey a Western Australian thing, is it? So that's
Speaker 1: where they had the institute of sport they do and
Speaker 1: especially aligned with that West Australia.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but it was what happened.
Speaker 3: Of course, the historical things really quite interesting. I mean
Speaker 3: the center of hockey in the world was the subcontinent.
Speaker 3: The Indians and the Pakistanis dominated the game. The British
Speaker 3: took it there and taught them as they did with
Speaker 3: you know, soccer all over the world when they built railways.
Speaker 3: But they took the game across to India and the
Speaker 3: Indian and the packers. Indian were much much better than them,
Speaker 3: and they developed the game. They introduced new technology that
Speaker 3: changed the shape of the stick. So for the first
Speaker 3: part of the last century they were the dominant. They
Speaker 3: won the gold medal at the Olympics eight eight Olympics
Speaker 3: in a row.
Speaker 2: That's how good their domination was.
Speaker 3: And when partition occurred in India, and of course lots
Speaker 3: of Anglo Indians left India and lots of Indians left,
Speaker 3: they got on boats and they went all over the well.
Speaker 3: But one of the first places they landed, of course,
Speaker 3: across the Indian Ocean in Perth. And they went to
Speaker 3: other parts of Australia and they had an influence, but
Speaker 3: in lots of them landed in Perth. There was a family,
Speaker 3: the Pierce brothers, five brothers who all played for Australia,
Speaker 3: who came from India. And in Perth, we you know
Speaker 3: where the sand rapers. We've got a sand plane. So
Speaker 3: when it rains in the winter, the fields are perfect.
Speaker 3: They're not muddy like they are in the East. And
Speaker 3: so you could play hockey really well. You had fast pictures,
Speaker 3: fast grounds, and those people played for Australia. They developed
Speaker 3: a culture, the game grew and so Western Australia, for
Speaker 3: you know, way up until the eighties dominated the game. Now,
Speaker 3: of course you've got synthetic pictures, you've got quality pictures
Speaker 3: all over the country and the games played on synthetic pictures.
Speaker 3: But you know, the culture here remains. And you know,
Speaker 3: when in nineteen eighty four I was in the Parliament.
Speaker 2: We.
Speaker 3: Diversified the Australian Institute of Sports for the first time.
Speaker 2: We said, well, we need to have particular sports in.
Speaker 3: Particular places, and of course cycling and cricket, for instance,
Speaker 3: went to Adelaide, and hockey was based in Perth where
Speaker 3: they had the best pictures, facilities and a really strong
Speaker 3: local competition, you know, and other states would argue that
Speaker 3: it should be there now, but that's a historical event
Speaker 3: and the facilities of course here are now. And then
Speaker 3: they're just we've got a money from the state government
Speaker 3: for a massive new training center, you know, over one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars, and so I think it's going to
Speaker 3: stay here for a while, but they're building something truly international.
Speaker 1: You played two undred twenty seven games for Australia. When
Speaker 1: did you first have that ambition?
Speaker 3: Look, I was playing in an environment where I was,
Speaker 3: you know, training with and seeing these people who were
Speaker 3: going off to the Olympics. And in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: I'm sixteen years old and I watched the Olympics. You
Speaker 3: just it used to be at the end of the
Speaker 3: night they would show clips from Mexico, you know, and
Speaker 3: it would be a fifteen or twenty minute piece and that,
Speaker 3: you know, and some of our athletes did very well
Speaker 3: in Mexico. We won the eight hundred meters. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to remember the guy's name. I'm having a senior moment now.
Speaker 3: And rafter Bell, Ralph de Bell won the eight hundred
Speaker 3: and you know, we had Peter Norman came sickon in
Speaker 3: the two hundred and the famous salute. But then at
Speaker 3: the end of the session they always have a little
Speaker 3: bit of the hockey and the hockey team beat India
Speaker 3: for the first time in the semi final and lost
Speaker 3: in the final to Pakistan because India had become two
Speaker 3: countries by then, and so you know, they run the
Speaker 3: silver medal and some of those people I used to
Speaker 3: know and train with, and I thought, God, in four
Speaker 3: years time maybe, or in eight years time, I could
Speaker 3: be there.
Speaker 2: You know. Four years later I.
Speaker 1: Was first of five.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rick Charlesworth is my guest on Conversations. We need to
Speaker 1: take a break, bake shortly, folks. Welcome back to Conversations everybody.
Speaker 1: If you've just tuned in, I'm chatting with Vic Charlesworth,
Speaker 1: as I said right at the start, of a man
Speaker 1: who I've always been in awe of, even though he's
Speaker 1: a bit younger than me, not a lot younger, just
Speaker 1: a bit younger. The thing that intrigues me about you, Rick,
Speaker 1: and indeed other doctors or medical students that I've worked with.
Speaker 1: You're able to complete your medical degree, which is a
Speaker 1: significant time assuming i'd say arduous course, at the same
Speaker 1: time as having these elite sporting careers. How on earth
Speaker 1: did you do it? Can I are you one of
Speaker 1: these really smart people you know that just don't have
Speaker 1: to study?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's pretty freakish. There's not many people like that. I
Speaker 3: had to study, and you know, there's a fair bit
Speaker 3: of memory work required in getting a medical degree. But
Speaker 3: you know, I was a good student, and the world
Speaker 3: was a different place then. But I graduated in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine. So I started university in nineteen seventy and
Speaker 3: it wasn't so difficult to get into medicine in those
Speaker 3: days as it is now, although there was a there
Speaker 3: was a filter.
Speaker 2: So we started.
Speaker 3: There were two hundred and sixty of us that started
Speaker 3: medicine in the first year UWA, and now that I mean,
Speaker 3: I think there's only about one hundred each year that
Speaker 3: go through, so you know, but nowadays, of course you're
Speaker 3: filtered through the ATAR results and all of the other
Speaker 3: tests and hurdles that young people have to And I've
Speaker 3: got I've got three children in medicine, so you know,
Speaker 3: I know how it works. One who's presently a student,
Speaker 3: but that's for later on, I imagine. So there were
Speaker 3: two hundred and sixty of us that started, but the
Speaker 3: trick was only six you would go into second year,
Speaker 3: so you had to you had to basically your first
Speaker 3: year was the filter in those days, you know, so
Speaker 3: you had to get a's and b's or you didn't
Speaker 3: get into second year. That's how it worked. And a
Speaker 3: lot of those people went on and did other things,
Speaker 3: you know, in science or elsewhere. So that was the trick.
Speaker 1: But you're playing first class cricket for WA not.
Speaker 3: Yet nineteen seventy, you know, I'm I'm playing, I'm playing
Speaker 3: in the club competition and I'm playing for university at cricket.
Speaker 3: That's just the first year out of school and I'm
Speaker 3: in the I'm on the edge of the state senior
Speaker 3: team in hockey, you know, and I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 3: hoping to make do well at cricket, so.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the same level. You know.
Speaker 3: I trained and played every day, but you know, I
Speaker 3: did have time to study, and you had to.
Speaker 2: You had to, and we did. We did.
Speaker 3: We had physics, chemistry, biology, and maths. And I was
Speaker 3: pretty good at maths, so that wasn't too hard. And
Speaker 3: I had done physics at school. A lot of the
Speaker 3: people who went into medicine, of course, didn't have that background.
Speaker 3: So so I suppose I had you know that that
Speaker 3: that was wasn't too big a hurdle. And I'd done
Speaker 3: chemistry and physics, but I didn't hadn't done any biology
Speaker 3: at school, you know, because in those days, the good
Speaker 3: students did physics, chemistry, in maths and one other thing,
Speaker 3: and I studied German.
Speaker 2: You know. It was one of my.
Speaker 3: Great regrets, was I loved history and I didn't you
Speaker 3: didn't get to do it at school because it was
Speaker 3: a bit narrow, you know.
Speaker 2: The education.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I I I know, I did pretty well in
Speaker 3: first year, so I got in the second year. So
Speaker 3: then you know, then the serious stuff started, I suppose,
Speaker 3: because then it's lots of you know, you know, the
Speaker 3: next two years in medicine, there's lots of science, physiology,
Speaker 3: you know, anatomy really required lots lots of time and energy.
Speaker 3: And that's when my sporting career was just starting to
Speaker 3: kick off. So he got busy. In those next two years.
Speaker 1: You worked as a doctor too, and they worked interns,
Speaker 1: for instance, unconscionably.
Speaker 3: Hardy's see those days. They certainly did. Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: a busy, busy time, you know, and so we graduate.
Speaker 3: I graduated in seventy five, and at the end of
Speaker 3: seventy five and in seventy six, of course I went
Speaker 3: off to the Olympics in Montreal halfway through the year.
Speaker 3: But you know, they were happy to give me time off.
Speaker 3: You know, as an internet it's usually twelve months work
Speaker 3: in the hospital and doing different rotations. And it took
Speaker 3: me about a year and a half to finish my
Speaker 3: into and ship because I was then playing cricket and hockey,
Speaker 3: and the hospital was.
Speaker 2: Pretty helpful.
Speaker 3: And you know, my fellow fellow young doctors, they were
Speaker 3: always happy to take a shift for me or something
Speaker 3: if I had something on and you know, but it
Speaker 3: cost me, you know, I used to have to pay
Speaker 3: them for the shift.
Speaker 1: Well, you played in three successful Sheffield Chield teams. But
Speaker 1: it's your hockey career that intrigues me most. You were
Speaker 1: selected to represent Australia in five Olympic game. Now you
Speaker 1: didn't go to Moscow because of the but you were
Speaker 1: captain of a couple of those teams. He won silver
Speaker 1: in Montreal. Is there a regret there is it? Do
Speaker 1: you look back on that career as disappointed because there's
Speaker 1: no gold medal, no Olympic gold medal?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, you know, you would have loved that to happen,
Speaker 3: you know, And you know in the first Olympics I
Speaker 3: went to in Munich, we finished fifth. I was in
Speaker 3: an aging team. I was one of the few young
Speaker 3: people in an aging team. And as usually happened in
Speaker 3: these things, I think some of the older.
Speaker 2: Players held on too long.
Speaker 3: And you know, so the team wasn't refreshed, and your
Speaker 3: team's got to be continually refreshed.
Speaker 2: I don't care what it is, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean the Adelaide Crows in three years time will
Speaker 3: have a bunch of people who are different to the
Speaker 3: ones who were there at the moment, and the teams
Speaker 3: are constantly being refreshed, and as it was then, I think,
Speaker 3: you know, that team wasn't refreshed. They took some of
Speaker 3: the older ones who should and there were young ones
Speaker 3: who were left behind. Trevor Smith, for instance, from going
Speaker 3: from South Australia should have been in that team in
Speaker 3: my view.
Speaker 2: And you know, so we were close.
Speaker 3: You know, in the last game of the Olympics, we
Speaker 3: had to beat Holland to get to the semi finals,
Speaker 3: and they they beat us three to two in a
Speaker 3: pretty close game, and so we were nearly there, but
Speaker 3: not quite good enough.
Speaker 2: Four years later in Montreal, we had a very young team.
Speaker 3: I was the second most experienced player next to Rob Haig,
Speaker 3: who was of course the captain. He was South Australian
Speaker 3: and he'd played in me Mexico. And you know, we
Speaker 3: we beat all of the difficult teams India and Pakistan
Speaker 3: on the way through. Famously, we beat India six six one.
Speaker 3: That was the biggest drubbing I think they'd ever had
Speaker 3: up until then, and we unfortunately slipped over in the
Speaker 3: in the final, you know, against New Zealand, a team
Speaker 3: that you know well I played. I played seventeen years
Speaker 3: in the national team. We would have played thirty times
Speaker 3: against New Zealand. That's the only day they ever beat us,
Speaker 3: you know, so that can happen. But by the time
Speaker 3: we got to the final, we'd played a couple of
Speaker 3: extra matches because there were less teams in the other pool,
Speaker 3: and then we had to play a rapid charge game
Speaker 3: against India. You didn't have if you were level on
Speaker 3: points in those days they had you had to play
Speaker 3: a report change between the last game and the semi finals.
Speaker 3: So we had played a couple more games, and we
Speaker 3: had some injuries and we were tired, So probably that
Speaker 3: was the difference.
Speaker 1: You learn more from your disappointments, your tragedies than you
Speaker 1: do from your victories, in my assessment, and I wondered
Speaker 1: what you learned from that which stood you in better
Speaker 1: stead for your coaching.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think I think, you know, when I
Speaker 3: became a coach, I certainly think that the lessons that
Speaker 3: I learned as a player over a few decades, we
Speaker 3: were important and important part of the messages. And you know,
Speaker 3: and I mean one of my unfailing any player who
Speaker 3: played one of my teams would tell you the price
Speaker 3: of life is eternal vigilance. That was one of one
Speaker 3: of my old medical teachers taught us that, and and
Speaker 3: I certainly think that yeah, if you you you try
Speaker 3: to cover every base. You're diligent about everything that has
Speaker 3: to happen, you know, and the little things that you
Speaker 3: miss sometimes are the things that that slip up for
Speaker 3: you in the in the main game or in the
Speaker 3: in the big contest.
Speaker 1: Had great success with the women's hockey team. I wanted
Speaker 1: to about that and some of the observations I made
Speaker 1: during that time, but we'll do that after the break.
Speaker 1: Rick Charlesworth is my guest, Folks back shortly. My guest
Speaker 1: on conversation today is Rick Charlesworth's legendary hockey player, hockey coach, cricketer, politician.
Speaker 1: We probably won't have time to talk about politics, Rix,
Speaker 1: but people can go back and research that. Let me
Speaker 1: just take you back if I can, because when I
Speaker 1: played footy and when I coached, all our warm ups
Speaker 1: were done in the room before the game. You have
Speaker 1: just a handball and you've warm up, and there was
Speaker 1: never any room to do any warmups. I went through
Speaker 1: the Olympic Games in Sydney in two thousand and I
Speaker 1: wanted to see the women's hockey team in action. So
Speaker 1: I went and watched. I watched the warm up, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe how intense and how long the warm
Speaker 1: up was. And now all the players, all teams do it.
Speaker 1: Now they come out on the ground and then they
Speaker 1: do intensive warm ups. But it was at an innovative
Speaker 1: thing that you were doing all those years ago, that
Speaker 1: intense warm up before a game.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think it just makes sense. You know,
Speaker 3: you have to do things at the tempo of the
Speaker 3: game before the game or else. The first ten minutes
Speaker 3: of the game is like warming up, if you like,
Speaker 3: and the warm up is that preparation. It's physiological. It's
Speaker 3: about the muscles and the actions that are involved in
Speaker 3: the game. But so yeah, I think, you know, we
Speaker 3: we we'd been doing that for some time. I think
Speaker 3: we did quite a lot of things. Quite a lot
Speaker 3: of things came from me. If you're like, we're experimental,
Speaker 3: but came from my experience. Like we we used to
Speaker 3: do lots of running without the ball, you know, one
Speaker 3: hundred eight hundred meters, you know, and traditionally, of course
Speaker 3: the physiologist that's how they got fit, and that's how
Speaker 3: they they did all their experiments, but we just played
Speaker 3: the game and because the best you know, the first
Speaker 3: rule of physiology is specificity. You have to do what's
Speaker 3: specific for what you're going to be prepared for. Training
Speaker 3: sessions were monitored with the heart rate monitors. Back then
Speaker 3: we didn't have GPS, and we knew what was required
Speaker 3: in the game because they were heart rate monitors in
Speaker 3: the game, and so we replicated that at training plus
Speaker 3: some Was that.
Speaker 1: A traditional thing in hockey? That's such a I've seen
Speaker 1: it in volleyball as well. But was it a traditional
Speaker 1: thing when you were playing hockey that you'd have such
Speaker 1: an extensive warm up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, I think it had been for some time.
Speaker 3: Even when I was a player, we started to do that.
Speaker 3: We increased the tempo of our warm up, you know,
Speaker 3: you're talking in the eighties and the nineties, that.
Speaker 2: Was increasingly the case.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you go back the history of sport,
Speaker 3: at one stage or other, the team meeting was a thing.
Speaker 3: You know, before that, there was no team meeting. You
Speaker 3: went out and just played the game, you know, And
Speaker 3: through through the years that the people have generally been
Speaker 3: adding and subtracting and improving and developing so yeah, it
Speaker 3: was was that was something that you know, had been
Speaker 3: part of the caper. I think for the period when
Speaker 3: I was finishing as a player and certainly when I
Speaker 3: became involved in coaching, that was the case. As I said,
Speaker 3: we stopped running at training without the ball. Everything we
Speaker 3: did was with the ball, you know, and we measured
Speaker 3: we measured the load, of course, the physiological load from
Speaker 3: the game, and we replicated it plus ten percent of training.
Speaker 1: Obviously, I love the stuff you've done. There was a
Speaker 1: little segment I saw on your coaching lessons and you
Speaker 1: had five components. I don't know whether you can recall it.
Speaker 1: And you talked about quality, you talked about leadership, never compromise,
Speaker 1: get the culture right. And the fifth one was candor,
Speaker 1: and I just one intrigued me. Candor expect, brace conflict. Now.
Speaker 1: I know you're a tough coach. Could you coach the
Speaker 1: same way today?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you have to, you know, I mean
Speaker 3: there has to be an expectation of as you've mentioned there,
Speaker 3: of quality and diligence and all of those things. But
Speaker 3: I think Canada's critical in families, candace critical in businesses,
Speaker 3: you know. Jack Welsh wrote a book called Winning one
Speaker 3: of the best books I've read ever on business, and
Speaker 3: he said the biggest dirty secret in business is lack
Speaker 3: of candor.
Speaker 2: Although he spelt it wrong because he's American.
Speaker 3: He said, it stops good people being promoted, it stops
Speaker 3: new ideas and decisions coming forward. It's stultifies your organization.
Speaker 3: And you have to be able to say to people
Speaker 3: what you think, and you have to be you know,
Speaker 3: there's a way to do it, and you've got to
Speaker 3: have difficult conversations with players and with the administration and
Speaker 3: with it, you know, with your fellow staff at different times.
Speaker 3: You better develop the skills for being able to do that.
Speaker 3: If you don't do that, then you're not going to
Speaker 3: make progress. And it is a worry sometimes that everybody
Speaker 3: seems to be becoming more and more precious. But if
Speaker 3: you're not able to, if you're not doing what the
Speaker 3: team needs to do, then somebody has to say it.
Speaker 1: But but we're talking about as we grew up, there
Speaker 1: was the Neil Curley's and the Ron Bressis and the
Speaker 1: Byron Brimstone coaches who would tear strips off you if
Speaker 1: you do the wrong thing. But the young players today,
Speaker 1: I don't think tolerate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I know, but like I would, I wasn't
Speaker 3: that sort of a coach. But you know, they need
Speaker 3: to be hard messages. And those messages sometimes best one
Speaker 3: on one and sometimes you might do it in the group.
Speaker 3: You're never going to embarrass or dinner grate pace, but
Speaker 3: there is an expectation. I mean, the strongest force in
Speaker 3: your team. That's why you have to get the culture
Speaker 3: right is peer pressure. And the players have to hold
Speaker 3: one another to account and if they aren't, and if
Speaker 3: they're unwilling to, then you've got a problem.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I've got a famous quote from zennidin Za Dan saying that,
Speaker 3: you know, the biggest problem that the team had, and
Speaker 3: he's talking about Real Madrid here for the season was
Speaker 3: they were too afraid to confront each other about problems,
Speaker 3: and so they just drifted and drifted and they had
Speaker 3: their worst season ever, you know. So and he said
Speaker 3: there were too many big personalities in the team, we
Speaker 3: were too afraid to confront each other. Well, my thing
Speaker 3: is that there are no big personalities in the team,
Speaker 3: because if you're a big personality, you need to get
Speaker 3: involved in those conversations. You want to change what's happening
Speaker 3: in your team, and so peer pressure is critical and
Speaker 3: getting that culture right so players can actually you know,
Speaker 3: demand of each other quality is an important part of
Speaker 3: it too.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your awards, you know, the West Australia
Speaker 1: Sportsman of the Year, Avance Australia War, your AM, your AO,
Speaker 1: You're in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, You've Hockey
Speaker 1: Australia Hall. You've got all of these accolades, the Australian Sportsmen,
Speaker 1: a West Australian Citizens of the Year, the Finalist of
Speaker 1: Australia the Year, the Institute Sport Coach of the Year.
Speaker 1: Which are those is most precious to you? If at all? Well?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean those things come along and it's
Speaker 3: lovely and you go along to the sermony and the
Speaker 3: families there, and I think they are they are important,
Speaker 3: you know, But I suppose you don't. No one aims
Speaker 3: to do that, you know. I mean I was. I
Speaker 3: saw my role as a servant of the athletes when
Speaker 3: I became a coach. You know, my job was to
Speaker 3: help them realize their potential and I wanted them to
Speaker 3: be successful and as you know, if they were successful,
Speaker 3: then you know, I would be seen as being successful.
Speaker 3: And so that was And maybe the thing that I'm
Speaker 3: most proud of is that, you know, because I coached
Speaker 3: the Hockey Ruse for eight years and then the Cooker
Speaker 3: Borroughs for six and my time with the Cooker Borrows
Speaker 3: doesn't seem as being successful, but we had a better
Speaker 3: winning record than the Hockey Ruse. And over the six
Speaker 3: years I was there, we won every tournament except we
Speaker 3: slipped up one day in the Olympics, you know, and
Speaker 3: so you know, and that's if you're like tarnished is
Speaker 3: the record, but we want a winning percentage was better
Speaker 3: than the Hockey Rows.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The thing that I'm most proud of, I think is
Speaker 3: that during my time with the Hockey rus and the
Speaker 3: Cooker Borroughs, we we played in four World Cups and
Speaker 3: we won them all.
Speaker 1: You know, the hockey rules were sustained by South Australians.
Speaker 1: You couldn't have done it without South Australia.
Speaker 3: We had some wonderful South Australians, you know, Kate Allen, Alison,
Speaker 3: Alison Peake and Juliet Yeah, they were they were, They
Speaker 3: were wonderful players. And that was the thing that I
Speaker 3: was most proud about.
Speaker 2: But we played in that time.
Speaker 3: In all those sixteen years, we played in twenty five
Speaker 3: matches which were these are matches you have to win,
Speaker 3: the semi final, the final of the World Cup, the
Speaker 3: Olympic Games, the Champions Trophy or the Commonwealth Games. And
Speaker 3: we played in twenty five of those games and we
Speaker 3: won twenty four of them. And normally if you win
Speaker 3: fifty percent, you know, you'd say that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: You know, you get to those games and you're going
Speaker 2: to win something're going to lose some.
Speaker 3: So in some ways that's the thing that I'm most
Speaker 3: proud of that, you know, we turned up for those
Speaker 3: games during that time and we won nearly all of them.
Speaker 1: Like me, you are into your seventies, what is your
Speaker 1: what is your sporting fix these days? Or how do
Speaker 1: you satisfy that competitive urge?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Look, I love watching watching sport and and you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not a tribal person.
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 3: I don't put on the jumper and go to the
Speaker 3: game and get carried away like that. But I love
Speaker 3: to go and watch the contest and to see, you know,
Speaker 3: brilliant athletes perform brilliantly I mean, there's it's it's been
Speaker 3: one of these, like the elixirs of my life, and
Speaker 3: it continued whether you know, I went to see Perth
Speaker 3: Glory play the other week and they've had a rotten season,
Speaker 3: but you know, they won that day.
Speaker 2: But I enjoyed that. You know.
Speaker 3: I love the footy, you know, AFL. I think it's
Speaker 3: a marvelous competition.
Speaker 1: You know, you work for Freo for a while, who
Speaker 1: do you bury for?
Speaker 2: I barrack for free. Oh if I bear it for anybody, I'm.
Speaker 1: A bit worried do something about them.
Speaker 2: I'm a bit worried.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, like just the other week, I mean
Speaker 3: they they beat Adelaide here and they have what forty
Speaker 3: points up at three quart a time and one by eighteen,
Speaker 3: you know, and that just terribly worried me. You know,
Speaker 3: some of the goals that they got scored against him
Speaker 3: in the last quarter, you know that like that didn't
Speaker 3: look to me like they've got the hardness or toughness
Speaker 3: that their need.
Speaker 2: And you need to you know, your forty points up
Speaker 2: at three quught a time, you need to win by
Speaker 2: fifty five.
Speaker 3: You know, there's something something there that disappointed me.
Speaker 2: And you know from the other side.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, you know, Adlai's last quarter was
Speaker 3: was pretty impressive, you know, but so you know, I
Speaker 3: only get too carried away with the results. I'm looking
Speaker 3: at what's inside the game, and I think I think,
Speaker 3: as a coach, you have to do that too.
Speaker 1: So much left still to talk about. It's always great
Speaker 1: catching up for Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Rick Charlesworth was my guest folks, and I realized there
Speaker 1: was so much we didn't cover. But you can still
Speaker 1: find these written books. Go read the books. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us.