With the Rio 2016 hockey competitions about to get underway, renowned sports journalist and hockey TV commentator Ashley Morrison has published a book focussing on the highs and lows of the Australian men’s hockey team at the Olympic Games.
Featuring quotes from many of Australian hockey’s most famous players and coaches, Morrison explores in great depth the expectations that have been placed on the Kookaburras throughout their Olympic history. It provides a fascinating insight, shining a light on every Olympic campaign over the last 52 years as well as a look ahead to their title challenge in Rio.
Regarded as the most consistently successful Australian sports team over the past two decades, the Kookaburras have for more than 30 years been ranked among the top four nations in the world. Their consistent brilliance has resulted in huge expectations being placed on the team as they have entered each Olympic Games, where they have amassed nine Olympic medals since their debut at the 1956 Games on home soil in Melbourne. Despite a track record that is the envy of nearly every hockey playing nation on earth, many Kookaburras teams down the years have been unfairly branded as failures for bringing home anything less than the gold medal.
The Australian men – the reigning World, Champions Trophy and Hockey World League champions – have won a medal at every Olympic hockey tournament since the 1992 Games in Barcelona, with their most famous moment arriving at the Athens 2004 Olympiad, when they claimed that elusive first Olympic title after a 48 year wait thanks to Jamie Dwyer’s golden goal against the Netherlands. In the book, Dwyer tells of his feelings on bringing an end to the Kookaburras’ long wait for Olympic gold.
“After we won the gold medal and got back to Australia you had past Olympians who I thought would have been a bit jealous that we had won, but they were so happy for us”, Dwyer told Morrison. “It was like a relief. That is the one word that describes it: ‘relief’. A huge relief. The hockey community really got behind it and as athletes we were happy that hopefully kids were picking up a hockey stick and playing hockey rather than another sport.”
For more information about Ashley Morrison’s book and details about purchasing a copy, click here.
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