Sandi Logan and the NIHL

Sandy Gardner (right) and Richard Motteram, 1986. Gardner was captain of Australia in Perth in 1987.

AT THE SWANK END OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE lies a large, well-regarded continent. Orbiting this far south in uncharted backwaters at a distance of roughly sixteen thousand kilometres is an utterly insignificant red-yellow island. The natives are so amazingly primitive they still think cricket balls are cool. This island has a problem: most people living on it can't play ice hockey and those who can are on the piss. Visitors recommend many solutions, most centred on the movement south of Northern Hemispherians who play hockey. This always seemed suspicious, since it wasn't the northerners who were legless.

Canadian-born Sandi Logan, a 26-year-old former journalist with the Toronto Sun, returned to Sydney in 1978 to find two dozen top teams playing in loosely organised beer leagues in the big cities. [4] In New South Wales, a new rink opened almost every year. It was a decade of ice rinks shooting up in suburban tin sheds and fizzling like dud fireworks. A journalist in The Bulletin said, "Ice hockey in Australia has been on the outer edge of the big time so often it is surprising it has never been arrested for loitering!" [16]

Although Queensland had just won the first Goodall Cup for the state, Victoria's homegrown players still dominated the interstate competition. These included Sandy Gardner, Ian Holmes, Gary Croft, Ron Sullivan and Steve Duncan, with a smattering of Canadian expats such as Barry Harkin, Charlie Grandy and Grove Bennett. Logan joined Glebe Lions at left defence in the Sydney league but later told Peter Young at the Windsor Star newspaper in Canada it was "a dismal scene — poor administration, drunken players and brawls". [4]

With professional contacts in the Australian media, Logan hounded television and radio stations with promotional ideas and bombarded the press with news releases. He organised the Trail Blazers and the Terrace Bulldogs — two commercial league clubs from British Columbia — to tour Australia for pre-season exhibition games. In those days, initiative and a commitment to making ice hockey a major sport in Australia were noticed. Within twelve months of touching down in Sydney, the association appointed Logan national secretary. It was March 1979. [4]

Next year, Adelaide hosted the ice hockey nationals for the first time on the first rink suitable for competitive ice hockey in the city. Brian Grove owned Payneham in the north-east of Adelaide. Stepson Peter King managed it. Another rink opened at Phillip in Canberra along with the first ice hockey association in the Australian Capital Territory. John Purcell was national president. Logan, the national secretary, was also the first official Development Officer of the sport. [3]

Ice sports had about fourteen full-size rinks, four in Melbourne, four in Sydney, two in Brisbane and one apiece in Adelaide, Perth, Newcastle and Canberra. There were also six small rinks unsuitable for competition hockey. The operators of these rinks organised into the the Australian Ice Rink Operators Association — all the better to protect their vested interest. In June 1980, four of its members launched the National Ice Hockey League, bankrolled with 500,000 big ones in today's money. Any resemblance to a declaration of rebellion in a galaxy far away is entirely coincidental. Purcell and Logan at the Australian Ice Hockey Federation sanctioned it, convinced they had the more impressive name. [4]

Melbourne had the Oakleigh Aces (later Oakleigh Golds), Ringwood Rangers, Dandenong Blackhawks and Footscray Pirates. Sydney iced the Newcastle Northstars and Sydney All-Stars. The Adelaide Flyers, aka the Payneham Flyers, skated out of the City of Churches. Melbourne hosted more than half the league's 42-game schedule. Between June and August, eleven NIHL matches were played at Ringwood, six at Oakleigh and seven at Footscray.

In a bid to improve the quality of ice hockey on this utterly insignificant little red-yellow continent, and educate the heathens on the evils of football and cricket, Logan cajoled the Vancouver-based Canadian Pacific Airlines into supporting a hockey development program. He shuttled coaches and players here and even billeted them in his home. [4] The lobbying paid off in June 1980 when ABC TV broadcast a hockey game nationally and followed up with Ice Hockey Showdown 80. Teams from Melbourne and Sydney competed in "lightning mini-matches" with special rules for TV.

Showdown 80 launched on July 2nd at Pat Burley's Iceland Ringwood and screened over eight weeks. Logan described it as the second major television coup for "local ice hockey officials and ice rink managements". [2] The awe-struck natives admired this missionary zeal. It left little doubt the anointed one who walked among them was descended from the hockey gods.

Powered by Coke, the Sydney All-Stars won the best of three final series over the Ringwood Rangers on September 6th, 7th and 8th to become the first NIHL champions. The City of Sydney drew its team from local clubs. Among them were Logan and overseas players such as settler George Kenning, Darrell McDonald and state goalie Burke Thornton. Not surprisingly, the All-Stars were considered the strongest team to represent Sydney for a decade. Unlike their southern rivals, Sydney rinks had no intention of entering multiple teams. [14]

Dan Reynolds, who coached the Dandenong Blackhawks, was a resident of nine years. The American had coached the Australian National Team and his Club's captain Gary Croft played in it. Other locals included Steve Duncan, Alan Robbins, John Thomas, John Sutton, Kevin Madden and Paul Brockwell. Most non-natives were natural migrants resident for six years or more. Several had represented Australia since the 1974 Worlds, including Mike Boileau, goalie Barry Harkin, and Charlie Grandy, a veteran of the 1964 Olympic Playoff squad. [13]

Twenty-eight hundred people registered to play in Australia, two-thirds today's total. Yet at the top-level, forty per cent were Canadians and thirty per cent Europeans. [4] A whopping seventy per cent of the nation's top players were not Australians! Not even one in three were Australian.

"I consider it to be a five-year program to institute any sort of sane and sensible organisation into ice hockey in Australia," wrote the sport's new Development Officer. "To train the native-born talent flooding the sport's lower echelons, the hockey program will have to import more people to coach, referee, manage arenas and play at the higher levels". [4] Clubs being clubs preferred the shorter route of importing players over the skilled coaches, referees and managers of Logan's Promised Land.

The sport usually progressed when there were no shortcuts. Yet, despite the new junior structure based on the Canadian amateur system, there was no new development program at the elite level, no divine intervention within five years, and the little red-yellow continent at the ass end of nowhere again dropped out of international competition, this time for six years. The Australians had to wait for an invitation because they did not perform well enough in 1979 to qualify automatically. [15]

Next year, Melbourne's flagship rink at St Kilda closed, and the rot set in the Victorian game. In Adelaide, the second edition of the renamed Flyers was even less Australian. Kevin Brown coached initially and rink manager Peter King managed the team. Forty per cent of the twenty-one were from North America and forty per cent from Europe. [6]

For the 1981 season, the national association limited clubs to five import players apiece plus an import goaltender, yet a meagre twenty per cent was Australian. You did not need much imagination to arrive at a reasonable estimate of their actual ice time. Twelve imports regularly turned up to training. As Coach Kevin Brown boasted, "Not only are the local players fighting for a spot in the team but, from the amount of imports we have here in Adelaide, they also are competing for selection". [10]

The NIHL expanded to nine teams, and Adelaide's Payneham Flyers finished on top after winning just two games and the wooden spoon in the inaugural season. Sydney and now Adelaide eclipsed the Melbourne teams, setting the shape of fast things to come for decades. NIHL imports filled more and more spots on the South Australian State squad, including Canadians such as Orville Hildebrand, John Botterill and Wayne Kerry, Czech Vladimir Mihal, and Finns Arto Malste, Kary Pynonnen and Ari Pullinen.

South Australia won the first of nine Goodall Cups with these and other imports in 1986. Clubs were limited to five foreigners to improve the development of locals, yet South Australia imported more than half their twenty-man squad from far away. New South Wales followed suit with players such as David Turik, Garry Doré, Glen Foll, Ryan Switzer, Dave Emblem, Art Shaw, Jim Kinlough, Joey Delisle and many more. [9]

National president Phil Ginsberg, a Sydney advertising executive, said:" If the franchises in the National League spent two per cent of their total gross on advertising, they'd see a three-fold return at the gate, and let's face it, that's where the rink operators and franchises need to make money to recoup some of their investment in the sport". [17]

The CP Air sponsor package was different to most, designed to benefit the developing juniors of the sport, not the League, the Clubs or the participants. Juniors had no National Team, and the neglect of junior development combined with lobbying encouraged CP Air to take up the reigns through the NIHL. Its sponsorship plan, which included scholarships for junior players in Canada and overseas coaches and referees for Australian clinics, was one way CP Air made its presence more widely felt in what was developing into a lucrative route — the North America Oz hop. [17]

The sport could not complain about financial support from various state and federal governments in the 80s. The ground transport requirements of three overseas teams from Vancouver, Alberta and Langley in Canada helped sell the sport to the media and engendered further public interest and awareness. "Big bickies," said Logan. "To be honest, the National League will need more than just good players and their wives selling raffle tickets if it is to be even a glimmer of its current state next season". [17] According to some, it was Logan who taught Australians ice has uses other than cooling beer.

"The concept of a National League is important to any sport because you've got to attract the sporting public right around the country with a product they can all identify with — something a fellow in Perth and a woman in Brisbane have in common. Soccer is beginning to make serious inroads into the rugby league scene in NSW; basketball is going great guns in Melbourne and Tasmania; volleyball has a National League now; and baseball is gaining terrific ground. We have to do the same if we want to survive as a national sport. After all, we now have the facilities to do it.

"Those other sports don't attract the thousands of spectators that football does. They are making inroads into private sponsorship areas unheard of a decade ago. They're also getting strong government backing and have good junior development programmes. We have the same situation relative to junior development and strong government backing. It's just the private dollars — the major backers of cricket and football, for example — we're hot to get our hands on". [17]

Glen Williamson, a 25-year-old uni grad and top Canadian college player who skated with the Warringah Bombers, went on to win the second NIHL season in 1981. Williamson came to join the Bombers after some mates from Canada boasted about the sun and surf lifestyle they enjoyed on Sydney's Northern Beaches. He found his appointment as Coach of the NSW Under 20s, the Brown Trophy, a real challenge. "I've got a bunch of young players who are probably five years behind their Canadian counterparts for whom I've got to adapt drills and plays to suit their abilities, bearing in mind they're as big as overseas players and as mature".[17]

"We've had enough of the National League this season," said Ginsberg, "and if someone wants to take up its reins next season and promote it as a commercial property entity with the Federation's sanctioning, they can and are welcome to it! I say that with all sincerity. . . it is the only way the National League will work properly. And after all, we're an amateur organisation under the International Ice Hockey Federation, affiliated with the Australian Olympic Federation. . . and that's where our mandate and charter lies — amateur sport. In one word: Kids!

"It just isn't worth it for the Federation to drop kids from its priorities for the sake of a semi-pro league. I'm sure the fans have seen some first-class hockey, but they wouldn't be aware of the behind-the-scenes problems which have made it very difficult to maintain a fair competition".

The first-ever national training camp was conducted at the Narrabeen Fitness Centre in Sydney, where about fifty players from around the country attended an intensive three-day clinic conducted by local and overseas coaches. The plans for the kids included a National Junior Team.

In 1982, player registrations rose sixty-six per cent over the previous year, 3500 players coast-to-coast. More than one-third were North Americans, all but a handful were Canadians, and none were pros. [11] The national association shut down the NIHL because it excluded the locals it was supposed to develop.

Rising from its ashes, Mike Michelson's professional league, the VIHL, began on April 29th after a swish media briefing at the Hilton Hotel of all forty-five Northern Hemisperians contracted to play in six teams. [12] The promoters hoped to rake in big ones with record crowds in a 15-round season.

In a matter of months, the national association in Sydney outlawed it. "Their promotions are based on thuggery and violence," said Ginsberg from a safe distance. Almost every match in the league had reportedly featured ugly brawls, [8] but some resentment also arose from long-standing state sporting rivalries.

Pat Burley said, "I wouldn't be the first to puzzle over why a sport with such an obvious basic appeal to the Australian love of sport has never succeeded in being promoted to the level of its potential. Quite a few people have tried, and some have come close to making it work, but there's never been any staying power there".

The entrepreneur closed Ringwood Iceland and like a house of cards, Footscray and Dandenong collapsed a few years later. Only Oakleigh lived on, and a new rink at regional Bendigo, 90 minutes distant. The domino effect took down half the local clubs in Victoria although the state association doggedly persisted with its Development Council at the city's only rink. Oakleigh was two-thirds the IIHF standard and increasingly dilapidated.

Imports flooded the local sport, especially in South Australia and New South Wales. Victoria was the only State able to pride itself on developing its players to the Olympic level. Yet it won the Goodall Cup only once during the three decades from 1980 when the NIHL began.

In the following four Worlds teams — 1986, 1987, 1989 and 1990 — at least one-third of Australia's twenty-man international squads had been imported to play hockey in the NIHL or local and State competitions. Yet over the decade since the NIHL, Australia rose two places in the world rankings and fell three. It rose two more in the 1990s and fell thirteen to an all-time low in 1995.

"They don't come for the competition," said Logan. "The teams have meetings and say, 'Let's take a vacation in Australia and arrange some light hockey games while we're on the trip.'" [11] After the NIHL was folded, one of the states carried on an East Coast Superleague for eighteen years until everyone got tired of not having a National League. So, Steve Oddy and Jim Thilthorpe in South Australia offered to visit Sydney and play the two remnant teams. This new NIHL is today's AIHL.

Forty-three years on, the littlest continent is still at or near its all-time low in world hockey circles. Its Clubs still import Northern Hemispherians and now Southern Hemispherians to play hockey for them. The Great Reset, a secret new points system, returned import quotas back to 1981 levels: five imported skaters with an import goalie per team, although this is believed to be regulated somewhat by the size and colour of the rabbit that teams pull out of a hat. [18] It's all just for show anyway as there are effectively no limits, just smoke and mirrors and loopholes allowing clubs to import and naturalise overseas players after spending two seasons here. [19]

Some come for legitimate family reasons or with the required occupational skills. But the constant flow arriving and staying on via this unofficial assisted immigration program can only mean hockey players are eligible under the Skilled Occupation List. Perhaps they're "Entertainers or Variety Artists" or "Actors, Dancers and Other Entertainers". More than a few remain as long as it takes to learn cricket balls and beer are cool ideas. Gradually they become as skilled as the utterly insignificant red-yellow island natives.

For a moment in red-yellow island hockey, nothing happened. Then, after forty-three years or so, nothing continued to happen. The Northern Hemispherian had always assumed his intelligence made him a better hockey player than the red-yellow island native because he had achieved so much — the game, the egg carton, the Wonderbra, wars and so on — whilst all the red-yellow island natives had ever done was splash around at the beach having a good time.

Conversely, the red-yellow island natives had always believed that they were far more intelligent than the Northern Hemispherians — for precisely the same reasons.





Hockey biographies:
Sandi Logan | John Purcell | Pat Burley | Phil Ginsberg
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Originally published as Missionary Man in 2016. Updated and expanded July 2024, new Legends website.