Australia finds value in coach poaching

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 82,00.html

Plenty of worth in coach poach
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Ron Reed
October 04, 2008 12:00am
GREG Chappell and Ric Charlesworth, contemporaries on the first-class cricket scene three decades ago, have had something else to talk about lately.

Charlesworth was installed this week as the new coach of the Australian men's hockey team, the Kookaburras, after resigning in frustrating circumstances from his most recent job as technical director of that sport in India.

Chappell, as has been well documented, also fell out with his Indian employers after two years as their cricket coach.

He recently became head coach of Cricket Australia's Centre of Excellence.

As befits two true superstars of Australian sport, both have been welcomed back enthusiastically.

While Charlesworth's appointment created barely a ripple in the media, it's very good news for hockey and the Olympic family in general.

The Australian Olympic Committee - and the Paralympians, too - have concluded in recent years that finding the right coaches and, more importantly, keeping them, is as important as unearthing talented athletes.

President John Coates made that point - again - in Beijing recently when warning that more funding would be needed to keep pace with Great Britain in London in 2012.

For some time, the British have been ploughing huge money into poaching coaches, especially ours, in a range of sports, and their much-improved performance in China suggests it has been money well spent.

Not that Australia has been hiding behind the door in this cloak-and-dagger game.

Coates admitted this week that we signed up 200 coaches from all over the globe before the Sydney Games in 2000, and many are still on board - for instance, pole vault gold medallist Steve Hooker's Russian mentor Alex Parnov.

Coates' British counterpart, Lord Moynihan, visited him this week and promised not to pinch any more coaches.

However, a strong rumour is doing the rounds that, in fact, approaches have been made to canoe/kayak husband-and-wife coaching team Richard and Myriam Fox, who oversaw a five-medal blinder in Beijing.

It's a good time to be a coach - as long as you're a winner.

It's only just over a month since Beijing, but the game of musical chairs is already in full swing.

Most notably, perhaps, head track and sprint cycling coach Martin Barras appears to have paid the price for track cycling's Olympic wipe-out, having been offered a new role that has not yet been made public.

High-profile swimmers Libby Trickett, Jessicah Schipper and Kenrick Monk have changed coaches, while rowing and track and field have made major changes.

Rowing, ironically, is holding a coaching talkfest on the Gold Coast this weekend, with the keynote speaker being Australian Paul Thompson, now coaching the Brits, who topped the rowing medal tally in Beijing.

And now there's Charlesworth, whose profile and respect have always been in keeping with his reputation as a serial over-achiever.

He was a decent-enough opening bat for Western Australia and then became the world's best hockey player across four Olympics, later coaching the Australian women's team, the Hockeyroos, to gold medals in Atlanta and Sydney.

He has worked as a mentor to five national team coaches at the Institute of Sport and with the Fremantle footy club, New Zealand cricket and Indian hockey, as well as writing several books, practising as a doctor and spending 10 years in federal Parliament.

Now, at 56, he is finally back where he has wanted to be for a long time now - with his first and greatest sporting love. The Kookaburras are laughing.

reedr@heraldsun.com.au

[altius]

"Coates admitted this week that we signed up 200 coaches from all over the globe before the Sydney Games in 2000, and many are still on board - for instance, pole vault gold medallist Steve Hooker's Russian mentor Alex Parnov."

Typical example of the bulldust that floats around. John Coates and the Australian Olympic commission had nothing to do with Parnov coming to Australia although inevitably everyone is coming out of the woodwork to claim credit. Who was it said victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan?!

Parnov came to Oz in 1996 through sheer serendipity. I wanted to bring Botcharnikov out to OZ but he was linking up with Lojo -so Roman introduced me to Alex in Atlanta ; he wanted to get out of Russia with his family - he eventually brought Markov and Chystiakov with him. He did not come to a paid position until a little finagling between friends organised a salary.

Apart from all of that it should not be forgotten that Steve's original coach, Mark Stewart, took him from beginner to 5.92m before they both decided that full time training with a full time coach was required to take him to the next level. Mark is an academic and in our system could never make the time available for that.

[Andy_C]

I'm going to come right out and defend the Aussies here.

I'm an American living in Australia and from what I can see I do not think the Aussies are coach poaching (at least for athletics, I cannot comment for other sports). I come to this conclusion based on:

1) Many of the foreign coaches I've met here in Sydney come from Eastern European or Asian countries. This includes my own pole vault coach as well as some of the other track and gymnastics coaches I know of. From my conversations with these people, they have told me that they moved to Australia seeking opportunity in a similar way to how migrants move to the USA also seeking a better life. In saying that, a lot of these foreign coaches have moved here not because they have been offered to do so, but because they felt that living in this country would be better for themselves and their families.

2) I'm not going to pull any punches with this one... To be brutally honest, there simply is not enough money flowing through track and field here in Australia for the Aussies to really be competitive in bidding for coaches. For one, the government really doesn't like to put that much money into athletics, which really gets me frustrated since I'm paying a ludicrous tax rate compared to living in California and that money really doesn't seem to be going anywhere even though the new government just spent the entire surplus budget! While Aussies are extremely competitive in sports (especially considering the country only has 20 million people), the funds that do get through all get diverted to sports like Rugby and Cricket. Swimming is the most "important" non-traditional sport and of course that leaves track and field getting the shaft. As suggested, almost every pole vault coach (as well as athlete) in this country do their training part-time. Parnov being the only full time coach I can think of (not sure about Ray Boyd, maybe Altius can correct me here).

Simple truth, it would be a cold day in heck before Athletics Australia could wow a Petrov (or another highly rated coach) with enough $$$ alone to make the move. I just don't see enough money flowing through the system here. Just about everything comes out-of-pockets of the coaches and athletes. A huge contrast to the type of College, High School and some of the professional programs you see in the US.

On that note, the Aussie athletes and coaches need to be commended for their efforts, for athletics and pole vault in particular. Not only have they worked hard to achieve tremendous success for a country with 20 million people, but many of them have done it while having to make a living doing something else. Good on ya' Aussies!



Sorry for the rant. I had to vent some frustration here and I hope I did not offend anybody. When I mean "not enough funds" I'm not talking about 3rd world poverty. I think each state has one really good athletics facility where major competitions are held but the athletics clubs are really hard pressed. I bet you I could find more pole vault landing systems and poles in the San Francisco bay area than the whole of Australia.


But then, this is all from one person's perspective. I could be wrong and any minute now some experienced pole vault connoisseur from Adelaide could come in here and absolutely tear me to pieces. But hey, this is just what I see. /rant

-Andrew