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David Bell - Women's
Hockey 'Captaining a team representing your country is a time-honoured sporting tradition. It recognises the contribution to the team often through inspirational play and leadership qualities. It is an honour.' So says David Bell in explaining why one of his first moves as new coach of the Australian women's hockey team and head of the AIS women's hockey program will be to re-instate the national captaincy and vice-captaincy positions. Former coach Ric Charlesworth, once Bell's Olympic skipper, had dumped the positions, stating that every player in the team should be a leader, rather than just one or two. Bell agrees that all players should show leadership on the pitch, but argues that the captaincy and vice-captaincy positions should still be traditional positions to which players can htmlire. It's one of the changes that Bell will make during his time at the helm. The dual-Olympian who has been Australian Institute of Sport senior men's coach for the last three years has a very different coaching style to Charlesworth. And that brings us to the question that every sports journalist in Australia has been asking Bell … how will you fill the shoes of one of Australia's most successful coaches_ 'You don't go into this sort of position without knowing that these are the sorts of questions that will be asked. If you do, then you're naïve,' Bell says philosophically. 'I'm not trying to fill Charlie's shoes. I'm my own person. I'm not as high profile and I see myself as more of a quiet achiever. I believe that I'm approachable and prepared to listen to advice before making a decision, especially tough ones. I suppose I will be less autocratic than Charlie.' This will be the first time Bell has developed a full program for a women's team, although he has been a specialist coach to the Olympic women's team. His career path has taken him from club coach, through the ITC (now NTC) program to coach of the WA senior men's team and assistant coach to the men at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. In the short term, Bell's main tasks will be that of talent identification, after nine out of 25 squad members retired following the Sydney Olympics. 'If you look at it, that's like nine out of the top 16 in the world,' Bell says. You're talking about something like 1800 games worth of experience and all of those players have one, two or even three Olympic gold medals. 'It's a bonus that the Hockeyroos have set a high standard for the young ones. It will inspire young female players in achieving national selection in the future. If you're a female hockey player in Australia aged between 18 and 22 I hope you will see a window of opportunity here.' (article appears in Sports Coach, Vol 24 No. 1, 2001) |
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