“Hockey is one of the great passions of my life. I have never found it anti-intellectual.”

, Ric Charlesworth and Brent Livermore helped capture the Champions Trophy for Australia in ’09. Images: Getty Images
As a young man in Perth, Charlesworth went to medical school, graduated and became a working doctor. He opened the batting for Western Australia, scoring more than 2000 first-class runs, many of them on a WACA deck that was downright malevolent toward opening batsmen. But the hockey pitch was his true love and he went to four Olympic Games with the Kookaburras, from Munich to Seoul, sitting out the Moscow boycott in 1980. He claimed a silver medal at the Montreal Games, captained the team at the Los Angeles Games, won World Cup gold at London in ’86.

After hanging up his hockey stick he turned his hand to politics, spending four terms in Parliament as the Labor member for Perth. He found politics stimulating but hell on his private life, so he quit and stumbled, by chance, into the coaching position of the Hockeyroos. For eight years he guided the girls to unprecedented success, claiming four Champions Trophy titles, two World Cups, two Olympic golds.

In October 2008, Charlesworth took the reins of our men’s team, the Kookaburras. His golden touch was promptly apparent as the team won last year’s Champions Trophy in Melbourne. During preparation for the upcoming World Cup this month and Commonwealth Games (October), both in Delhi, Charlesworth took the time to have a coffee with Inside Sport. Believe us, this is a man worth listening to.

Congratulations on the recent triumph at the Champions Trophy. Were you nervous at half-time in the final as Germany held a 3-1 lead?

Oh … yeah! We actually played quite well in the first half and hockey’s the kind of game – because it’s low scoring – where you can be making chances and playing well, but the other team scores on the counter attack and you’re down. We had a few things go against us in the first half; we were playing okay, we just weren’t getting rewarded. That’s the reality in hockey.I’ve been in the job a year now and I’ve been saying all along that to get things solid will take 18 months to two years. So I contend that it was pretty early to be tested in the sort of situation we were in in that Champions Trophy final.

You were still critical of the team’s defence after the game …

Well, we made mistakes in defence that put us in that situation. And I think we can mend those mistakes. You’ve got to be honest about where you’re at in this caper. You can’t kid yourself because the final exam is a tough one and there are a lot of things that can go wrong, so you’ve got to pay attention to these things to ensure reliability.We picked a team for the Champions Trophy with an eye to the World Cup because we wanted some people to be tested. You know, we’ve had three defenders who have debuted in the last year, and that’s pretty hairy. Particularly when you consider we’ve had two great defenders and two goalkeepers retire after Beijing. So yes, our defence needs work.