Scott, Stan

THE FOUR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS Western Australia won in the Eighties were the last for almost a quarter century, until the state again won the Brown tournament in Adelaide in 2011, coached by Mike Cooke, Rod Hare and Bob Johnstone. Victories in 3 of 4 age bands have since followed, and a large part of that success is attributable to the Perth Thunder in the AIHL. "Winning that Brown gives the kids the belief we can win tournaments," said Scott at the time, "and with the Thunder coming, it also gives the kids something to strive for."

The idea of an AIHL team in the West gained currency from around 2007. "WA Hockey was becoming stale" he said, "we needed something for our better players, a challenge, I suggested bringing out an AIHL team for a challenge series. I was told it could not be done." From Manchester England, he was a player with the West Coast Flyers in the Western Australia Super League, he had been a long-time coach of local hockey and a former WA coaching director, when he started the club in 2010 with John Del Basso. "I knew the coach from Melbourne Ice (Paul Watson), so it happened against the odds. After those games all our players wanted it, so did our spectators, it was a huge success and that started us thinking we can do this."

GM since inception, his vision is to use the crop of young talent in state junior ranks to form the backbone of a strong AIHL team. The club began to seriously campaign to enter the AIHL in 2009. It "involved inviting teams over to WA to test team competitiveness, plus travelling away to play them… creating a sustainable business plan, acquiring sponsors and support, and then applying for a provisional AIHL licence and successfully fulfilling its requirements." A provisional license granted November 2010 for the 2011 season allowed the ninth team to enter the League in 2012.

Like all Perth teams competing in any national competition, he had to deal with problems peculiar to the west, including higher costs, draining double-headers, a lack of pre-season match practice, and the extra demands of the last weeks of the season. There was no equalisation, although the concept is common in sport here; the AFL gave birth to it long ago. "We supplied a solid business plan and showed the AIHL the benefits Perth could bring to the AIHL, who also worked closely with us to develop a system that could overcome these issues."

He completed a Level 3 Coaching course in 2012, and he was Head Coach when Thunder played their inaugural season in the AIHL that year. Although the goal was to make finals in the first year, the new team finished fourth in their conference. He was coach in 2013 when the Thunder made the Goodall Cup finals for the first time in just their second season, and he was interim coach after Dylan Forsythe in 2014. The team in the West have since made the finals in three consecutive seasons.

His parochial views have not made him one of the most admired figures in Australian hockey according to some. But for others, he is refreshingly outspoken on matters ranging from his youthful squad to the need for top imports, and very clear about what it takes to have a top-level competition. “We all have one goal that we want the league to succeed … we're not going to keep it if we all want to run our own little empires”. Thunder is his passion, and he says his involvement is "eternal". "I can't see me dropping out of it ... I can't see anything but positives."