Australia men's national field hockey team

Australia men's national field hockey team
The Australia men's national field hockey team (nicknamed the Kookaburras) is one of the nation's most successful top-level sporting teams. They are the only Australian team in any sport to receive medals at six straight Summer Olympic Games (1992–2012). The Kookaburras placed in the top four in every Olympics between 1980 and 2012; in 2016, the Kookaburras placed sixth. They also won the Hockey World Cup in 1986, 2010 and 2014.
The Kookaburras' inability to win an Olympic gold medal despite their perennial competitiveness, led many in the Australian hockey community to speak of a "curse" afflicting the team, finally broken in 2004 with the win in Athens. However, they failed to win Gold after that after losses in subsequent Olympics including a loss to Belgium in the Gold Medal Match of 2020 Tokyo Olympics - the Kookaburras instead won the silver medal.
History
Australia's first men's team competed in an international match in 1922.
The first major competition won by the national team was the 1983 World Championships held in Karachi.
Participations
Australia's first men's team competed at the Olympics in field hockey at the 1956 Summer Olympics.
Australia did not medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics or the 1988 Summer Olympics. At the 1992 Summer Olympics, Australia earned a silver medal, losing gold to Germany. At the 1996 Summer Olympics, Australia finished third, earning a bronze medal.
The team won their first Olympic gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Barry Dancer coached the side.
Should Australia win the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics they will become the first national team in field hockey history to hold all four international titles available to them simultaneously. They would hold titles in the 2012 Olympics, 2010 World Cup, 2011 Champions Trophy and their continental championship (2011 Oceania Cup) at the same time. Along with those four titles Australia also holds the Commonwealth Games title from the 2010 championships.
Tournament records
^Australia and New Zealand originally withdrew from matches due to the COVID-19 global pandemic and subsequent international restrictions on travel. In the lead up to the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, Australia and New Zealand played two matches as part of the 2020-21 Pro League in Perth.
Team
Current squad
The following 20 players were named in the Kookaburras squad for the FIH Pro League matches against Belgium and the Netherlands in Europe.
Head coach: Colin Batch
The remainder of the 2023 national squad is as follows:
Recent call-ups
The following players have received call-ups to the national team in the last twelve months.
Notable players
Ric Charlesworth
Jamie Dwyer
Results
2023 Fixtures & Results
XV FIH World Cup
FIH Pro League
Family
Barry Dancer/Brent Dancer and Ric Charlesworth/Jonathan Charlesworth are two pairs of father as coach and son as player while both were affiliated with the national team in those positions.
Recognition
1981: Australian Sport Awards Team of the Year
1987: Australian Sport Awards Team of the Year
2004: Australian Sport Awards International Team of the Year
2014: AIS Sport Performance Awards Team of the Year.
References
The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games n.d., Tokyo 2020, olympics.com. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
External links
FIH profile
Field hockey
Oceanian men's national field hockey teams
1922 establishments in Australia