A reminder of what we can be

Scott Davidson and the first World Juniors

My hope is that it will aid the Australian Ice Hockey Federation in developing their youth and constructing a successful junior team that is to represent them in the 1983 European Junior Championships.
— Coach Scott Davidson, who formulated Australia's first National Junior Program, Melbourne, 1982. [1]

It's costing every player at least $1200 ($4200) for the trip... some of the kids have given up their jobs, and that's a worry. Others have let their school studies suffer because of the long training hours. This is Australia's first time in the world junior titles and we all believe that, despite our great distance from the rest of the ice hockey playing countries, we can be winners.
— Max McKowen, manager of Australia's first National Junior Ice Hockey Team, 1983.[10]

Scott Davidson. TLA Worldwide.

"AUSTRALIA HAS GREAT ATHLETES," says Scott Davidson, who has worked with most major sporting organizations in various parts of the world, including the NBA, IOC, FIFA, AFL, NRL, RWC and Invictus. "But ice hockey players never develop the skills here to be good enough for the world stage. Unless you are exposed to the sport at high level regularly, and your reaction time is getting shorter, you're not in it".

In 1981, Davidson, a recent graduate of the University of Winnipeg, quit his job and headed to Australia to help with plans for a National Junior Team to compete at the IIHF World Junior Ice Hockey Championships for the first time. He ended up in Melbourne where he formulated a 42-page National Junior Program for Australia, with guidance from the sports psychologist at his alma mater, Dr Cal Botterill. Around the same time, Cal's brother John decamped to Adelaide at the start of another long coaching career.

Cal's book Every Kid Can Win is in the bibliography, along with Meagher's Coaching Hockey, and six articles ranging from strength development to pre-season training, agility testing to progressive training systems in Moscow, game tactics to the forming of the Coaching Association of Canada.

Davidson interviewed others at the University: head athletic therapist Glen Bergeron, who now serves internationally as the president of that World Federation, and Tommy Marshall, Davidson's Level 5 coach with the Wesmen. Kozak, a Level 5 instructor in the certification program of the Canadian association, and Dr Jerry Wilson, the WHA Winnipeg Jets' team doctor who helped pioneer European hockey in North America.

The program also drew on a dozen seminar papers of the Coaching Association from 1973, and a Swedish Hockey Clinic of 1980 which outlined the Swedish 5-man attack. There had never been anything like it in the history of the Australian game. National president Phil Ginsberg said "The timing could not be better," [7] and team manager Ron Mann recalls "It was a huge learning experience for us all". [18]

The schedule called for two teams of twenty-two players by the end of October 1982—the "North squad" in Sydney, and the "South squad" in Melbourne. Coaches rated each player's performance, and those with the most commitment, intelligence, skills, and adaptability to systems of play, made it through the exhibition games to the last cut at the end of January 1983. Australia's first National Junior Team bailed for a training camp in Germany ten weeks later. And then the World Championships in Bucharest.

BORN IN 1959 IN WINNIPEG, Canada, [20] Scott Davidson played minor hockey for the River East Marauders in Winnipeg. In those years, a progressive Ukraine coach led the Marauders to Provincial titles, and Davidson toured Canada and played in the Wrigley tournament series against teams like the junior Marlies and the Soviet Midget Red Army.

The Soviet team played sport all year round, and all the players had basic army-style training at some time of the year. In 1974, Canada watched on TV as the tourists despatched the Verdun Midget Maple Leafs, 16-5. [19] The Canadians had just won the first Wrigley National Midget Hockey Tournament, the forerunner to Canada's national midget championship.

It was good grounding for a coaching career, but Davidson found the coaching quality reduced as he moved through the system. He played Centre at Major Junior level under Tommy Marshall, [20] the Level 5 coach who led the University's Wesmen in those years. From the mid Sixties until the early Eighties, hockey was a fixture there, playing in the Great Plains competition against very strong opposition from CIS powerhouse teams including Lakehead, Manitoba, Brandon, and Regina. [22]

"University hockey was based around less talent, more practice time," Davidson says. Like women's hockey, it was less physical, but with more time to develop a team game. Canada's hockey scene was less protected back then, but a flood of Europeans looking for opportunities affected the country's own youth development, forcing the change.

That's where you and I come in. Because the Canadians were particular about whom they sent when Australia reached out for help with its national junior program. Two Level-3 coaches from the University of Winnipeg arrived—Davidson to Melbourne, and goalie Ken Kozak to Sydney. In those years, Melbourne hockey ran out of the St Moritz Ice Palais in St Kilda, and Davidson signed with the local Monarchs club for almost one hundred-and-fifty games, winning the coveted President's Medal three times straight.

He was allowed to set up his own hockey school, although he admits it may have overlapped the Development Council program. Later he would work with Bob Blackburn, and Peter and Liz Rintel, on the Council's Minor Hockey Week.

He organised Australia's first World Juniors around a Coaching group in charge of team selection, and the development of the players mental, physical, technical and tactical abilities. That meant running the bench during games, and getting the players fit and positive, while advancing a skills curriculum, a player evaluation and correction system, and tactical game plays. I learned from this group what you learn from all good coaches, that hockey is a form of reciprocity, a mutual coincidence of wants between participants.

Head Coach Glen Williamson graduated from Brandon, two or three hours up the highway from Winnipeg. Born in 1955, the assignment popped-up in his twenties where it served as a springboard for a notable career around the world. Swiss League, Swiss Under-20 Elit, Assistant Coach of the NHL Winnipeg Jets, Scout for the NHL LA Kings, Head Coach of Hungarian National Junior Teams, and many others.

The Assistant Coaches were Davidson and Ivan Brown. Ivan was Williamson's age, and Scott four years their junior. Brown graduated from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. In Sydney he played for the Warringah Bombers with Williamson, the pair winning the last NIHL Championship. Back home, he played for the Portage Terriers as a teenager in the MJHL; the University while studying psychology and agriculture; then the St Boniface Mohawks in the CSHL in '78. He later coached in Austria, and in England with the Guildford Flames.

By design, an Advisory Committee helped the coaches with team selection, new ideas and statistics. A Sports Medicine team took good care of players, and advised both the coaches and players on injury prevention during training and competition. A Team Co-ordinator held similar duties to a contemporary team manager, and several others handled player registration, finance, facilities, travel, PR and other off-ice administration.

Into the staff roles came Chef-de-Mission Sandi Logan, GM Ron Mann, Manager Max McKowen, Sports Trainer Victoria Mann, and Statistician Joan McKowen. Captains mediated between players and coaches, organised social functions, and set team goals. That job went to John Jugum from Victoria.

Ideas for the team started with as state-of-the-art an introduction to top-level junior ice hockey as could be found at the time anywhere in the world. The story of the 1980 gold-medal-winning US Olympic hockey team was already well known, the "Miracle On Ice".

But Swift's rendering of it must have resonated with the disaffected junior ice hockey movement of a country like Australia more than any other place on Earth. The average age of the Olympians was just 22. They were kids, but "The whole was greater than the parts by a mile," wrote Swift. "They were not just a team, they were innovative and exuberant and absolutely unafraid to succeed". [9]

Davidson placed the themes underlying this underdog victory right under the noses of all involved. He wanted young open-minded kids who could skate and work hard. Not those who Brooks described as ignorant, self-centred people who don't want to expand their thoughts "like ninety percent of the NHL".

And like Brooks, he knew where to go to break down the stereotypes on conditioning and tactics, and throw the pieces out the window. He chatted to the University's athletic therapist about physically preparing hockey players for competition using anaerobic, strength and stretching forms of training. He discussed attitude problems and their disruptive effects within similar programs with his former Wesmen coach, Tommy Marshall.

He went with Botterill for mental preparation in competition, and the use of goal setting in a competitive program. Help with the different types of anaerobic training, and the role of enzymes in the lactic system, came from the Winnipeg Jets doctor. It was all relatively new thinking for Australian ice hockey.

At the first national camp, players rated themselves on a five-point scale representing the fundamental skills of skating, passing, shooting and checking. The camp experience, and those who submitted evaluations, impressed on Davidson that "most players are strong in the skating components, but weak in the passing, shooting and checking areas". [3]

"Melbourne players were okay," he says. "Sydney players were flashy, but not sustainable overseas". [17] Ray Robertson, a coach and development officer in Sydney, also spoke of an "urgent need" to lift young players' basic skills, and gained the approval of a state meeting for skill testing and a head coach at all clubs. [8] The number of imports in local teams reduced from eight to five, with only goaltenders exempt. [8]

Sometimes the overseas coaches were criticised for not taking the best players, but they wanted the grinders who worked hard and would not drop off. The final cut of players drew evenly from New South Wales and Victoria, and one from Western Australia. Manager Max McKowen told the press their dedication was amazing. At a camp in Sydney, the teenagers trained in the only ice slot they could get to themselves, from 11:30 at night, to 4 in the morning. [10]

The first Junior C-Pool marked the junior team debut of not only Australia, but also Romania and Bulgaria. Junior development had only just begun, and the preparation time was short. They played their first international against the home side in Bucharest on March 3rd 1983. Defeated 10-2, Romania went on undefeated to Pool-B with a goal differential of plus-40 (49:9). As expected, Australia struggled against Bulgaria and Hungary (12:40). They played five other games in the double round robin against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, losing them all.

"Romania was a culture shock," recalls Coach. "Up against teams who were acclimatized, with access to good nutrition, things like that". [17] Darren Burgess, who played the game from 1977 to '85 remembers, "It was a big deal back then. We weren't that successful, but such is life. A few of the originals are still paying. They are the true Legends of the game!" The next year, Davidson took over as Head Coach.

Arriving in Adelaide in his mid-twenties, Craig Campbell first played with the local Tigers club. Player-coach of the Adelaide Flyers at the time, the ABC Slapshot Series Champions, he won three Goodall Cups, and twice represented Australia. The former Brandon University Bobcat coached the Adelaide Redwings and the South Australian Brown team. He also officiated state league, and the Brown and Tange junior nationals of the time.

Many in Campbell's circle of university alumni, and there are quite a few like Rob Smith and Ivan Brown, had a high opinion of Davidson and his aptitude for coaching. So Campbell thought he'd go to a camp and watch. "I was six years Scott's senior, but heart and soul were the same. Scott wasn't on a hockey holiday; he came to Australia to develop the game. He's sharp as a pin, with a 360-degree cerebral view of hockey. A left-brain, right-brain type of guy, he'd been through it all back home. So we get talking and he asks: 'Do you want to come onboard?'"

Hard-nosed "Spooly" Campbell officially signed up as Assistant Coach, but his role is better understood as the Drill Sergeant. "Scott was the good guy," he says. "We always discussed discipline first, and there was always a good reason. If I'm not leading myself, I'm one hundred percent following a guy with that kind of belief, loyal to a fault".

Varese hosted the 1984 IIHF Junior (U20) C-Pool title, a city situated on seven hills overlooking a lake near Milan in Northern Italy. Seven countries officially participated, with Great Britain and Spain making their debut. Fourteen of Australia's twenty players returned—thirteen from Victoria, seven from New South Wales.

Although winless again, the team's goal differential improved to minus-17 against Italy, Spain and Great Britain (11:28). They were better in defence, but Campbell has no doubt they lost two winnable games due to undisciplined penalties from one particular player. "There's two very important things in hockey," he says, "attitude and conditioning. And playing opponents at this level, a lot of them pros, you just can't drop your role on a team to level up on someone out of self-interest. Get their number". [24]

Australia also won a game in the Consolation Group against Belgium, Great Britain and an unofficially ranked team from Italy to finish minus-3. But they dropped three places in the world rankings, defeated by Italy 16-2, Spain 5-4, Great Britain 7-5, and Belgium 8-3. They did not return the next year, nor the one after that. Beautiful Varese was Davidson's last World Juniors tournament.

Gerry Skuta coached the team in Esbjerg Denmark in 1987, captained by Rad Benicky. Again Australia lost all games, including a 1-21 defeat at the hands of Yugoslavia on March 22nd, which is still their biggest defeat of all time. A minus-51 goal differential sent the program backwards, and this time the nation toppled out of the World Juniors for thirteen years.

The Australian national junior program unravelled over time, along with the National Development Council. Coach John Botterill rebuilt the team in '96, and when they returned in 2000, after four years of preparation, they won their first ever games against Bulgaria and Iceland. It took seventeen years.

AUSTRALIAN HOCKEY WAS IN BIG TROUBLE before the arrival of overseas coaches in the early Eighties. The Development Council set up in Victoria in 1976 went national in 1980. But in New South Wales after the abandoned National Ice Hockey League, "There were not enough players of talent sufficient for each rink to house its own Senior-A team". [5] The state set up house leagues at each rink with all available ice time devoted to junior development.

The next year, the government gave a record $16,550 ($64,000) to develop state hockey, which was three or four times the last allocation. [6] A Superleague began operating and continued within its own boundaries for nearly twenty years, until no one could take seriously a state-controlled National League.

The new AIHL affiliated with the National body and, through it, the International Federation, but it does not run that way. It does not have a benefactor like a pro league either. And it does not invest profits back into the sport for rinks and athlete development like a Canterbury Ice Rink co-op. It survives somewhere in-between, thanks to the scratching around of a mostly unpaid workforce.

But it did not start that way. It had goals and performance measures for elite development to begin, including a three-year target of thirty-three percent of under-25 players. By mid-season 2002, it achieved twenty-five percent, [15] and today half the League is under 25. But the number of younger players at two of eight clubs, the Melbourne Mustangs and Newcastle, is well below the norm. [16]

Less than one quarter of 200 AIHL players are under 21 today, but some clubs have more than others, whether they chose that path, or not. Most of the developing youth play at just three clubs, [25] while more than sixty percent of the Ice Dogs are under 21. Two of these three teams finished in the bottom half of the 2019 standings, while the other won the League. Three clubs roster just two junior development players, and the majority have less than the League average.

The real ice time these youngsters get is not tracked, but it's not much, because the skill development and conditioning available to most top juniors here is very limited, and it usually diminishes the higher they go. The Clubs with fewer development players over-rely on seniors and imports, and so competitiveness slowly degrades until it collapses. It takes years to rebuild, and yet a sustainable future for these clubs is theirs for the taking: a steady stream of skilled, young athletes with regular exposure to higher-level hockey throughout the competition years.

At twenty-three, Davidson was poor, alone, and responsible for the National Junior Ice Hockey Program of a foreign country. The average age of the 1980 Olympians he studied was almost his own age, and the Australian juniors who arrived at his camps were not that much younger. He understood the change that had been sweeping over Canada's game since the 1972 Summit Series. He understood that Herb Brooks, the "Miracle" coach, specifically aimed to compete with the Soviets by combining the physical North American style with the faster European style emphasising creativity and teamwork.

The Soviet Midget Red Army gave him first hand experience of the changing game during the very years the Soviets strode the Prairie, pole-axing Canada's game for the sport of it. He understood that Brooks stressed peak conditioning because many of the Soviets' opponents were gassed by the third period. When the bell tolled, Canada had to choose between ingesting European-style hockey science and conditioning, or being gobbled up by it. The boy from Winnipeg raised the knife and fork.

A captain of the Saints club, Victoria's most successful, Davidson's close friendship with Saints Coach, Dan Reynolds, is interesting. Unlike Davidson's approach, Reynold's was known to play favourites, and his club and national squads over-relied on players developed overseas. Yet the pair campaigned together in three senior internationals in which Scott both played and coached.

In Perth in 1987, the new D-Pool Worlds, almost every player on Australia's team had developed overseas. Davidson, who had lived in Australia for more than five years, finished equal-top on points with Charlie Cooper when New Zealand's ice hockey team found itself on the receiving end of a world record 58-0 shellacking. [21] The pair piled on forty-two points each; an average seven points a game, with Scott netting twenty-one goals and Best Player for Australia. [23]

Graham Glass, who played for the Ice Blacks on that infamous day, said recently "It did not take long for the IIHF to change the rules around eligibility after the world championships concluded. A quick look at Australia's goal tally through six games—177 for and just six against—and it is pretty obvious something needed to be done. New rules were introduced to stop players jumping from one country to the other. Foreign-born players who wanted to represent another country had to officially transfer...and play ice hockey domestically for two years". [10]

While New Zealand's league allows imports, teams can only dress four, plus two assimilated players who intend to play for New Zealand or live there long-term. Glass returned home and reported: "Look, we have got some serious work to do. We need to start working hard on the coaching; we have got to teach kids all the basics from the get go, and in ten years' time we may be competitive". [21] Glass became president of the NZIHF in 1999, and stayed on for 10 years. The Ice Blacks are competitive today and, more importantly, a product of New Zealand. They defeated the Mighty Roos at the two most recent New Zealand Winter Games.

In 1988, when the aim of the game here was to compete in the 1992 Olympics, Davidson played the Thayer Tutt tournament in Eindhoven and Tilburg. State team mates Sandy Gardner and Emanuel Hadjigeorgiou, also returned along with South Australia's Arte Malste. They played in Group A with Japan, Netherlands, China, Bulgaria and North Korea. Each team played the other five in their group. [26]

They lost 8-1 to Denmark in the last round to finish last overall with a scoring differential of minus-42 (7:49). Frank Inouye scored three goals with singles to Davidson, Craig Campbell, Dean Pollock, Dave Allen and Brent Windlinger. [17] "It was the best hockey I was involved in as player in Australia," recalls Davidson. He won the team's Best Player again, but this outing he injured an ACL.

At the C-Pool Worlds in Sydney the next year, Scott captained Australia, but the knee injury led to a neck brace, and a few years on, he stopped playing top-level. He stayed on at the Saints, and then moved on to Masters hockey with the Melbourne Nite Owls. Later, he helped set up the Melbourne Marauders in the same league with Paul Doney, Richard Motteram and a few others. [11]

SCOTT DAVIDSON LIKES SETTING THINGS UP. Like the sports wear and fashion apparel business he started when he arrived Down Under. This requires some reconnaissance, which for Davidson involves moving in and out of the country, over and over. Not so much as a research method as a form of self-surgery. His products and brands from America—New Balance, Russell Athletic and B.U.M. Equipment—report on those lessons he has learned along the way. He is always thinking about the ways in which opportunity fails, as guile yields again and again to authenticity.

So it is not surprising he was a founding director of Elite Sports Properties by the mid Nineties, with former AFL footballer Craig Kelly, and former Olympic swimmer Robin Woodhouse. They sold the talent management and sports marketing group to TLA Worldwide in 2015, and today one-hundred-and-twenty employees represent hundreds of top Australian and British Olympians, footballers and media personalities from five locations, including London. The one-time Winnipegger still based in Melbourne looks after its Merchandising and Licensing business.

Our Under-20s' international Win-Loss-Tie record is now 23-64-1, and we are ranked 36th in the world. Many aspects of the original Junior Program are weak or missing in action. So I ask: why develop a national program for juniors, only to have it lapse?

"It was a lifestyle thing. Ice hockey makes better people," he says, pointing to the many Australians he took to Canada and elsewhere as youngsters who still play hockey with him. That happens to be the goal of Kathy Berg's coaching; a point not lost on a legion of female hockey players here who she took from novice to athlete in the early 2000s.

"It lapses," he reasons, "because you need people who have the time and commitment to develop and maintain a program". I don't need to think about that for long. I see a frustration with the limits of amateurism over and over through history. But people who fall in love with sport do exist, and so the answer is also about another Davidson insight: "They're managing with people who have the time, but not the skills. Most haven't heard of business planning or risk management".

Australia's first World Juniors got off on the right foot, led by university grads from an overseas hockey nation. A nation learning the hard way that the "best" players, and the baggage they drag behind, are not necessarily best for a high-performance team competing internationally. Their result, 20th overall in the World Junior rankings, still stands as the nation's best Under-20 finish by sixteen places, and a reminder of what we can be.

Campbell says: "When I want to know something about anything in sport, I contact Scott. He spent time in Beijing recently, setting up companies for the Olympics. Someone called to see if he could look after Shaquille O'Neill. So he showed Shaquille Beijing.

"Scott's a blue-collar background guy, connected all over the world at sport's highest levels. But you wouldn't know it by talking to him. He's honourable and classy without working on it, and he has a great hockey mind. He's flown under the radar for a long time". [24]

Scott Davidson plans to spend more time in China soon. Not for work, for the experience. The lifestyle.



________________

With special thanks to Craig Campbell.

Courtesy Darren Burgess.