A League of Their Own

The AIHL and the fight for the Big League

... to build for today and the future a strong, nationally based ice hockey competition, featuring the best Australian players and providing the highest quality sports entertainment, whilst offering a development structure for the players and officials of tomorrow... developing all of hockey, through expanding and improving the public image of the sport, to a level of participation and excellence that could return Australian ice hockey to the Olympic stage.

The AIHL Commission is dedicated to ensuring the successful future of the League. In this regard it is heartening that an enduring affiliation with the AIHF has been established, enabling the AIHL to benefit from the sanction and support of the AIHF, with the AIHF in turn benefiting from the player development and the public profile of the AIHL.

— Australian Ice Hockey League, June 2002.

The Sydney Bears, NSW Superleague, Macquarie Ice Rink, 1999. [11]

THE NEW SHOPPING CENTRE occupied a 9.4-hectare site adjoining a university in suburban Sydney in 1981. Grace Bros, Big W, Woolworths, Target and Greater Union anchored the centre, beating out David Jones to become the largest in the city. Unique in the history of local ice sports, the international-size ice rink in the Macquarie Centre seated thousands. Figure skating, ice dance, synchronised skating, theatre on ice, speed skating and ice hockey. It was enough to make every rink operator in the state believe in ice hockey clubs, or at least their gate takings, and the right to bid to host interstate tournaments and international tours. [1]

The top of the New South Wales ice hockey scene had revolved around the Bombers, St George Flyers, Northern Stars, United International, Blacktown and the Lions. But when Macquarie opened, the state association and rink managers limited clubs to one per rink, each with five teams and new responsibilities for Juniors. [1] Canterbury International and the oldest club, Glebe, disbanded. St George, the second oldest, merged with the Finn Eagles to form the Sydney Icemen.

For the first time in decades, a visiting ice hockey team played a local side with no overseas players. The team from Ontario defeated the NSW All-Stars 7-1 at the new Ice Centre in front of more than 2000 spectators. "A sign of confidence in the growth and development of an Australian ice hockey identity," wrote the Canberra Times. [2]

While the last NIHL season got underway, national president Phil Ginsberg, armed with a new national coaching accreditation program, lobbied the Federal Government to add ice hockey to the development programs at the Australian Institute of Sport. The Phillip ice rink in Canberra opened and the discussion turned to a proposal for a new top-level senior ice hockey competition controlled by the NSW association.

Jack Heggie's six-team competition, known later as the C P Air Superleague, were the Warringah Bombers, the Iceland Finns (Allstars), the Newcastle North Stars, the Sydney Icemen, the Canterbury Eagles and the Blacktown Flyers. The Macquarie Bears and the Canberra Knights replaced the Finns and the Icemen in the first year of competition. All the clubs in this "national league" came from inside a single state boundary while down south Pat Burley closed the first of his three Victorian rinks.

The new Superleague attempted to evolve into television in 1983-4 with a modified format known as the SLAPSHOT series. Teams from Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane competed. The competition permitted five imports with no more than four playing national and Superleague games at any one time. [1] The Superleague fell on hard times in the early nineties, some clubs less and less able to compete, dropping in and out over the years, and struggling to stay afloat from 1994 as the newly renamed East Coast Superleague.

In the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, government funding priorities shifted to Olympic sports. Late in 1996, the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Coaching Council stopped funding ice hockey. The IIHF funds intended for Australian representative teams continued, [1] but they were also used for other things. Players still paid to represent their country.

South Australia expressed interest in joining the Superleague, and Victoria led by Charlie Grandy considered it, even though the state had yet to reunite with the national association. There was enough interest for a national league of four states when in 1998-9, it became obvious the state-controlled competition was in dire straits.

The NSW league downsized to just three clubs, moving new state president Ken Lambert to write: "The message I want to convey... is one of great personal optimism for the Association's future, but with a stern element of caution about the need for the maintenance of strong inter-club cooperation, at least at Committee level, to avoid the ludicrous polarisation that reduced our sport to its lowest ebb over the last two to three years. [1]

"Clearly, the last decade for ice hockey in Sydney has produced some incredibly deep-seated hatred and bigotry which exists in every club, and which has allowed the bush lawyers among us to have a field day! However, none of this should have any valid place in any sport. Objective appraisal and the statistical record discredits the bigoted notion that any [one] club is "cleaner" or has "higher ideals" than any other". [1]

At that time, Victoria had seven clubs, inline hockey players boosting numbers almost 25 per cent over the previous year. [5] Amid the poverty of ice rinks, the State government called for proposals to build and run a new national ice sports centre. But ten years passed before the twin-rink ice skating facility opened at Melbourne Docklands, while local ice hockey subsisted at one undersized and unloved suburban rink. Although the sport's state powerhouse won the Goodall Cup the year the NSW Superleague began, it did not win again for 28 years, not until the Docklands complex opened.

The Warringah Bombers relocated to Blacktown when their Narrabeen rink closed. The Blacktown club withdrew its support for the Flyers entry, and a semi-private Blacktown Bullets entered. The Sydney Phantoms playing out of Penrith Ice Palace entered an under-capitalised and under-resourced team which ultimately failed to complete the season. [1] The Adelaide Avalanche joined the newly renamed Australian Ice Hockey Superleague in 1999, but the League could no longer continue. People forced a change withdrawing administrative and club support for a national competition controlled by a state.

Just two teams dominated the Superleague's seventeen seasons: the Macquarie (Sydney) Bears (7) and the Warringah Bombers (6). The Canberra Knights won the CP Air Cup twice in the early years, and the Canterbury Eagles and Blacktown Bullets won one apiece in the latter years. Proper competitive balance did not exist, and it would not until every well-run club had a regularly recurring reasonable hope of post-season play. Good ideas died amid the turmoil of bitter in-fighting within the clubs and association. Dick Mann had earlier proposed a promotion and relegation model for state ice hockey [11] which was common in Europe and similar to the Victorian Amateur Football Association. The VFA relegated the bottom two teams and promoted the grand finalists.

That was the state of play when Steve Oddy and Jim Thilthorpe founded the Adelaide Avalanche in 1999. Armed with a common goal of better competition for their four sons, Oddy approached the Superleague teams with an offer to pay their travel costs to Adelaide for exhibition games. Sydney, Canterbury and Canberra all travelled there and played to full houses. Canterbury and Blacktown withdrew from the negotiations. The committee acknowledged expansion as crucial to League survival, but in small steps and with certainty.

Only three Superleague teams survived to decide its future: the Avs, the Sydney Bears and Canberra Knights. They met for the last time to announce a new three-team competition known as the Australian Ice Hockey League. Its founding principle, forged in the Superleague's smouldering embers, was a legitimate national competition to "attract the four key elements—players and officials, spectators and sponsors".

Oddy co-financed team travel four or five times a season early on, back and forth between Adelaide and the east coast. His opponents from the former Superleague travelled to Adelaide once each season. Oddy and Thilthorpe built the club into a powerhouse, recruiting coach John Botterill, manager Ross Noga, and several notable players imported from overseas, including Trevor Walsh, Eric Lien and former NHLer, Steve McKenna. The Avs dominated the early years, making the Finals in the first three seasons and winning the first Goodall Cups in 2000 and 2001.

A vision of a national ice hockey competition in Australia had emerged and among its drivers were imported players from the early Superleague era. Ironically, it shared more with a distant past its organisers did not know. A strong and even competition in which "Australian players and officials would take an active interest and leading role. [7] A marketable and highly promotable product. A high-quality sports entertainment attracting players, coaches, officials and sponsors of an international standard."

If vision is the art of seeing things invisible, then this was it, if only because the sport's prosperity during its boom years was a distant memory. As the curtain closed on the first century of Australian ice hockey, few remembered attending matches with 5000 fans. Teams with no imported "stars". Homegrown players trained by overseas coaches who had resettled here permanently. Three 20-minute periods in which two referees officiated, broadcast on radio and free-to-air television.

The AIHL proposed to: "serve the long-term needs of junior and developing players in Australia, providing a career path for those who wished to play at international and professional levels overseas". Yet, many years on, a contrary argument flows freely among its coaches and administrators: The AIHL is not a development league.

Perhaps most surprising of all, the founding vision had "hopes of developing all of hockey, through expanding and improving the public image to a level of participation and excellence that could return Australian ice hockey to the Olympic stage.

"To build for today and the future," declared the new League founders, "a strong, nationally based ice hockey competition, featuring the best Australian players and providing the highest quality sports entertainment, whilst offering a development structure for the players and officials of tomorrow..."

THE OLD TIMER looks at me the way a hunter considers his prey. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it!" he warns, eyes alight with fire and brimstone. "You gotta learn from your mistakes". The temperature drops, freezing to hard frost, the brittle air condensing into ghostly exclamation marks.

I ponder what he knows of hockey's 110-year history here. Whatever it was, he had mostly forgotten, so I stand with a smile, pick my way carefully down the decaying chipboard stands, sidle along the boards to one of too few exit signs in the fire trap. Dodging water drops from the roof, I break out into the birth of a new day, the promise of a wintry Melbourne dawn, amid the fanfare of pucks slamming into the antique woodwork and the Under-18 state team.

Mark Weber founded the Melbourne Ice here, scouting prospects while playing games for two years. Yet, the AIHL did not rate a mention in the president's reports in Victoria during the early years. The state association could not arrest the decline in interest in the open age competition for the Goodall Cup, let alone a semi-professional club. [3, 4, 5] And it would not be long before the symbol of a century of Australian ice hockey supremacy left in exile for an overseas hall of fame, apparently too fragile to remain.

In 2000, the three founding clubs in Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney approached Weber to start an AIHL team in Melbourne. Next season, Victoria entered a Goodall Cup squad after a short absence. They finished third, giving the eventual winners a scare. [6] The new club organised an exhibition game series in their bid to enter the AIHL. On July 14th, Adelaide Avalanche won their one-game series 1-0. Then, on October 20th, the Sydney Bears lost to Victoria, 13-3. [6] The AIHL admitted the club in the April 2002 expansion with Weber as foundation chair and president. They played home games at the Olympic Ice Skating Rink in Oakleigh and occasionally in Bendigo.

The first AIHL Commission did not learn from history. To be fair, no AIHL Commission has. It's a side dish at best, buried under the cuts and thrusts of successive waves of make-do improvisation. Tony Lane from the ACT was president-commissioner and the temporary finance officer and statistician. With Weber's arrival, the president and vice presidents of Marketing and Policy formed a Communications Committee hoping to persuade "the supporting public to build ice hockey into their routines". League secretary Wayne Hellyer from New South Wales completed the 3-man administration.

Armed with total equity of $1365, [7] and a business model that owed more to North America than Australia, the trio embarked on a year of living dangerously, an expansion year, when Weber's Melbourne Ice, the Newcastle North Stars and the West Sydney Ice Dogs first hit the ice. A century-old rivalry between the senior states resumed, but most clubs still came from the old Superleague catchment, NSW and the ACT. So too did most league administrators. Stranger still, the new national league allowed its clubs to model player uniforms on the world's top professional hockey league: Adelaide was Washington, Canberra was San Jose, Melbourne was New York Rangers, Sydney Bears was Buffalo, and Sydney Ice Dogs was Colorado. [7]

The AIHL even adopted the common governance model of US professional sports. Club delegates made up the Board, and an all-powerful independent Commissioner took charge of many aspects. The North American "Commissioner" system that led "to the proliferation of litigation in US professional sports leagues" persisted in Australian men's ice hockey. A 2007 investigation of professional sporting teams in Australia found it was not suited to the Australian sporting landscape. [8]

Paul Horvath's paper won the Australia New Zealand Sports Law Association Paul Trisley Award. It says the Commissioner model in US professional sports, "is acknowledged, even by its creators, to be inefficient, subject to clear conflicts of interest and may, in conjunction with its delegate board of governance, constitute a breach of anti-trust statutes. It is not a worthwhile model for professional sports in Australia to follow. It holds little appeal for Metropolitan Football Leagues, whose preference is for a more egalitarian board model rather than the autocratic Commissioner model". But the AIHL followed it, constituted it, even when it proved poorly suited to its goals.

In the early years, the AIHL Commission met at the start, middle and end of each season. Two delegates from each member club, a manager and a player, attended the AGM. Responsible for League operation and policy, the Commission provided little administrative support and no financial help to its six clubs. It levied a small franchise fee of $200 to cover its expenses which quickly multiplied to thousands.

Private ownership of clubs is a key difference between the US and Australian sports leagues. Australian clubs are essentially public not-for-profit organisations without private ownership like their US counterparts. Their main objectives revolve around the members and supporters sense of belonging, the sense of identity, and the emotional outlet a club provides. [9] Winning and making the finals is next important, with business success a distant third. [10]

Horvath also noted, "The self-interest displayed by clubs is a major asset... It can and should be harnessed for club objectives, but not, it is suggested, for deciding major policy or strategic objectives of a league". [7] A board needs a range of persons with broad professional skills and experience to run effectively and comply with the growing number of laws.

Mid season 2002, 9800 people attended AIHL matches, an average of more than 300 per game. The League executive estimated about one-third came from entirely new markets and they watched games with an average of nine goals scored. [7] A total of six referees and seventeen linesmen officiated, but the standard of their skills concerned the teams.

League organisers responded with a formal evaluation and feedback process for on-ice officials. The team manager and coaches completed a form with help from the captains and alternates. The League then compiled the first numerical rating system for officials at the top level in Australia. They planned to appoint independent, paid referee evaluators in each state but the scheme lapsed. Craig Campbell led the referee performance rankings, and Steve Clyde-Smith led the Linesmen. [7]

League organisers also expected venues to keep up minimum standards of conditions and safety and held "significant concerns" over the safety of both players and spectators at two rinks. Problems at the Oakleigh rink in Melbourne resulted in temporary closure while AIHL talk turned to a Joint Working Party with the national association to decide what a minimum national rink standard might be.

Tyler Lovering led negotiations with a Queensland-based management group to investigate the prospects of an AIHL member team in either Brisbane or the Gold Coast. [7] Queensland entered a team in 2005 but lost it in 2012 when it could not secure a home venue. Instead, the AIHL expanded into Western Australia and Melbourne for a second time.

In November 2001, the national association passed a resolution permitting visiting players with a 3-month visa to take part. In June 2002, 27 per cent of 131 League players were imported, two per cent above the 3-year AIHL target. The youngest player was 16, and about one-quarter were under 25 or seven per cent below the 3-year target. In years to come, the number of imported overseas players more than doubled through naturalisation, blocking the rise of many young locals from lower, non-revenue producing comps and relegating others.

The AIHL reported it had met its expectations in many areas and exceeded them in others. It sought a closer working relationship with the national association, including "joint marketing arrangements" and a vote at its general assembly. The main sponsor, VIP Home Services, covered AIHL results through its media network and promoted games through the 7 and Prime television stations.

The founders aspired to a thriving, growing and successful competition in the Australian sporting market, [7] but imported heavily from an overseas professional sporting market, with little regard to unique differences like public not-for-profit clubs. It attracts overseas players and club operators interested in profit and perks at the expense of local players and unpaid volunteers. It still relies on the NHL model even though a cooperative model is most likely to achieve its stated aims. [8] Ironically, one was already in place at the Canterbury Ice Rink Co-operative in Sydney. Fifty years on, it still reinvests in local sports, not private owners and overseas players.

Best governance in sporting leagues in Australia requires close consultation between a league and its key stakeholders. [9] This diminished as the AIHL evolved with a structure and economic model unsuited to its original aims. These differences lead some to conclude the League pays lip service to most Australian players while acting against their best interests. Perhaps that is expected given the history of that kind of behaviour here, but the main problems are systemic flaws. The AIHL's mainly unregulated professional model consumes finite resources such as ice time and revenue that might otherwise go to an amateur development system with a long and storied history.

While progress in other areas benefits many locals and the sport in general, the AIHL is yet to complete its mission of "featuring the best Australian players and providing the highest quality sports entertainment, whilst offering a development structure for the players and officials of tomorrow". And it may never without systemic change because it features more imported overseas players than ever and so less development space for players and officials in the local system.

Not surprisingly then, the AIHL has not developed "all of hockey, through expanding and improving its public image to a level of participation and excellence that could return Australian ice hockey to the Olympic stage". [7] The men's national team results were no different in 2019 to when the AIHL began almost twenty years earlier.

The AIHL has expanded from three to eight teams and shown there is revenue potential in a national competition that could be used to develop the human capital and infrastructure of a uniquely Australian game. It is just that sports leagues do not function as free markets; they are blends of cooperation and competition. Cooperation for the sake of producing satisfactory competitiveness. [11]