Winners are grinners

This year I achieved something that hasn’t been done for 3o years. In the grand scheme of things it isn’t even that great a deal. I mean there are a bunch of people that have won gold medals in multiple ways that no one knows about, I guarantee that what I achieved is just so, Unless of course you live in the world that I inhabit. The world where underwater hockey is fun and you know a bunch of people that play it. Australia has produced some underwater hockey greats and have been world champions for years. I have developed a philosophy through necessity( I had no other choice). Basically I believe that to really enjoy winning you have to be able to embrace losing. When I started playing Cairns could barely scratch up enough players a night for club hockey in winter. At the Qld state titles Cairns was known for being the lowest ranked team and it was common to lose 10 nil to most teams. however the exposure to better players and strategy enabled me to take away from these games little areas to work on improve and grow. A number of us in the Cairns club decided that we would work on improving our clubs skills team work and ability to the play game intelligently.

In 2017 I and my family were exposed to nationals for the first time. Being a home state nationals there were around 16 people trying out for the team and I was one of them. I remember hearing some of the talk from other state teams in different divisions at the time that Qld was an underperforming state and usually was bottom ranked and never expected to do well.  I tried out for the QLD state masters team that year but didn’t make the team, this hurt my soul a little as I felt I was good enough but they say you can’t trust your feelings. Qld actually didn’t lose a game in the round robin drawing each game which was quite an accomplishment, however this wasn’t good enough to make the semis 8-(.

I determined that I was going to become a better player make the state team and help improve the level of the QLD masters team so that eventually we would take the gold medal. In 2018 NSW was looking for a couple of extra players and I put my hand up. Was I ready for it. Nope. Was it good for me absolutely… did I learn heaps…tons. I am still grateful to Phil Ackerman and Andy Dunlop who gave me heaps of feedback. It was great having a debrief after the games and learning some strategy and team building stuff. I even managed to score a goal in the final… and won gold with the NSW boys. I then managed to convince the Kiwis that I was still a kiwi and they gave me a spot on the New Zealand masters team travelling for Worlds in Quebec. Was I good enough again not really, did I learn heaps… so much… did I take away a bunch of things to incorporate into my game. Yep, Benson was even kind enough to give me a bunch of tips.

The following year I convinced enough people it was fun to play and we had a team of 10 players, I took on the role of coach(no one else wanted it) and we even had ourselves a training camp. We played as well as we could and again I learnt heaps from the experience. We even managed to earn a bronze medal. As a squad we set a goal to get more people excited about high level hockey skills and fitness and aim for a silver medal next time(levelling up). Masters hockey has a reputation for being crab bashing and full of people who cheat as often and craftily as they can. I can affirm that both of these are true to an extent however I have made it a part of my coaching and captaincy that we as Qld would not intentionally cheat in any games (unintentional is totally fine because of course you don’t know you are doing it) and we would play to the maximum ability of our skill and continue to work on both. . It is truly frustrating when you are playing to the best of your ability and someone uses their free hand to restrain you or you see someone finger swerve you or thumb the puck just to try and beat you, I mean if you are not good enough to beat someone with skill then get better…cheating is just lazy play.

In 2020 we managed to convince more  people and took 2 teams to Sydney, we decided to have a focus on having fun and not concentrating on the progress of the team this way win lose or draw we would be enjoying ourselves. We ran more training camps working on people improving their skills or learning new ones, we did the unexpected and beat the NSW boys in the semi to get ourselves a spot in the final. Again were we ready… nope, we ended up getting beaten 7 1 and Jason Miezies was kind enough to let me score the only goal 8-). We were nervous and found the bigger size of the a court did not help our game. We learnt heaps and took away a heap of things from the way the WA boys played the game, I watched a number of the elites games that year and learnt heaps from watching those games as well.

2021 was the year of Covid. Will there be a nationals wont there… in the end it went ahead however for QLD elites and masters a number of players made the decision not to attend. At the last minute most of the masters team changed their mind and booked tickets to fly in but the only available flight was to Launceston which necessitated me driving 4 hrs after my second game to pick up 4 players and we all got back into Hobart relatively late. We played as well as we could but unfortunately weren’t good enough to win the gold that year.

2022 was the year of we are having a nationals we are just not sure when and it got moved from January to April to July. This did give us the time to fit an extra training camp in and so after 3 training camps we felt we were ready for nationals, we felt like we had enough skill fitness and strategy to take us into the final. We played our first game and the goals started to go into the tray, our second game we managed to do something I wasn’t expecting and that was to beat WA in a round robin game. The rest of the round robin games we continued to work on our strategy and play and went into the final undefeated which by itself was a major accomplishment for QLD UWH. My son who was playing U19’s would catch up with me and I would ask him how many goals he had scored and for a short while I had the lead on him(he complained saying that as Fullback it wasn’t his job to score goals) he also went through his round robin undefeated. We played the semi-final and then it was final time.

To say I was nervous was an understatement even our most experienced player who had played multiple finals for worlds was nervous. The fact that we had won all of our round robin games just made the pressure greater for us as a team I believe. If you go into the final as the underdog you are fighting to earn the number 1 spot if you didn’t lose a game but lose the final then that also says something. The final turned out to be significantly more difficult than any of us on the Qld team would have liked

The WA boys were determined to make us earn our gold medal and came out playing hard,  I passed it back to one of my backs in the opening minutes of the game only to have a WA player pick up the puck and start racing to our goal. Thanks to some brilliant defending on the lip of the tray by one of my half backs a goal was averted but I subbed out to get my head right.  We played a goal down for most of the game. We did score some goals but they were disallowed for one reason or another. One of our players had his ankle smashed and the only way he could continue to play was to have the fin strapped tight to his ankle (he may still be driving and walking around with it strapped to his leg as it was on that tight) We managed to score a goal right at the end of the 2nd half that took us to a draw and took us into overtime. We played 2 5 minute halves with no team able to score an advantage. It was absolutely exhausting with one of our players pushing himself so hard that he threw up twice. I managed to get myself sent to the sin bin for 2 minutes but my team played some brilliant hockey and we managed to keep them out of our goal tray until I was back in the water. As soon as I was in the water we managed to break out of our 1/3rd and took the puck into their 1/3rd in the dying seconds of the game the puck was skating around their goal tray and I determined to stay on the bottom in the tray taking up space until it came near me and I scored or someone else scored it. In the last 2 seconds of the game a goal was scored and we made history giving us QLD’s 1st gold medal in 31 years. As I surfaced to take a breath someone pushed me under just as I breathed in so I spent the next 20 seconds dying and throwing up myself. Win lose or draw we played for the Joy of the game we had fun and this year we won.

The feeling of winning and being on a journey with 23 other players in the Qld Squad to become the best was great, the feelings are mountaintop level we took multiple photos(I look fat in all of them 8-) )and I got to watch my youngest son win his final as well for Qld. He also made history winning the 1st medal Qld has won in that division.

At the end of it all there is little glory in underwater hockey, no one knows my name really or what I achieved but I take away from the moment a large number of positive attributes I have better and stronger friendships/relationships with a bunch of men I didn’t know a couple of years ago. I got to encourage and inspire players to step outside the limits others had given them to improve their game and some to become champions. Those guys are all fitter and healthier than they would have been if they hadn’t come on the journey. As long as I  keep playing I will likely remain fitter and healthier than most men my age. My friendship circle has grown as I have gotten to know a number of the players on opposing teams. Sports are always a better investment of your time than media entertainment and will always give you more real world returns. Most of my family all played at this years nationals so we have the shared experience of playing a sport at high level and sharing another family holiday together.