Foll, Glen

HE WAS BORN GLEN JAMES FOLL on September 19th 1962 in New Westminster BC, Canada, to parents Ken and Irene Foll. Although his family liked sport, they were not particularly sporty and as it turned out his hockey experience there was all in the minor leagues. Four years in juniors, first in the North Surrey Minor Hockey Association where in his final year he was selected to the All-star team of the Lower Mainland midgets. Then the Surrey Saints in the Junior B-grade of the Pacific Junior Hockey League in British Columbia where he was again selected to the All-star team. [1, 2]

In the British Columbia Junior Hockey League he played for the Bellingham Blazers in 1979-80, the Vancouver Bluehawks in 1980-1; and the New Westminster Royals in 1981-2. [1, 2] The Blazers hailed from Bellingham in Washington during the regular season, and Langley in British Columbia during their 1970s playoff runs. The Bluehawks junior A hockey franchise had just been transferred to Burnaby while the Jnr A Royals played on-and-off from the late-1960s. For his final year in 1982-3, Foll played 22 games with the Langley Eagles and 17 with the Shuswap Totems, Salmon Arm's first Junior A team, where he averaged just under a point a game. [9]

In March 1982, the Macquarie Bears contacted him and transported him to Sydney, Australia. That club became the Sydney Bears in 1997, but back then they had just been formed at a new rink in the Macquarie Shopping Centre at North Ryde. They were busily recruiting overseas players for their team in the NSW Super League. [4]

Between 1982 and 1989, with the exception of 1985, he played six seasons for the Macquarie Bears. Although the Super League in the eighties was dominated by the Warringah Bombers playing out of Dick Groentemann's rink at Narrabean, the Bears had assembled enough talent by 1989 to win the championship. Foll was a defenseman on the premiership squad, he was the League's scoring leader in both 1988 and 1989, and he also played his first world championship in Sydney that year.

He was also there when New South Wales won back-to-back Goodall Cups in both those seasons. But they were to be his last for that state for quite some time. A former player of the Adelaide Falcons club had been luring him there for some years and he made the move in October 1989, although it turned out he lined up with the Adelaide Tigers A-grade team, not the Falcons. They won back-to-back premierships in 1990 and 1991 with Foll on the blue line. In the next three seasons, 1992 to 1994, he played for the Red Wings, returning to the Tigers in 1995 where he has remained up until the present day.

He has won seven premierships with the Tigers — 1990, 1991 and 1998, then again in four consecutive seasons, 2011 to 2014. He was the League scoring leader in 1991, 1993 and 2014. He won his fifth Goodall Cup in 1995 as playing coach; his sixth in 1997 as captain; his seventh and eighth back-to-back in 2000 and 2001 with Adelaide Avalanche; and his ninth and final Cup with the Newcastle North Stars in the 2005 season of the AIHL. Foundation captain of the Avs, one of the original three teams of the AIHL, he was thirty-seven years old when he played their inaugural season, the first of six with the Club.

Represented Australia at the IIHF World Championships from 1988 to 2006, except 1996 when his son was born. Captained Australia for a record 15 Worlds. In 1988 he played with the national team in two tournaments held in Australia, but not the Thayer Tutt, the invitational for countries that did not make the Olympics. In 1989 he was an alternate captain of the Mighty Roos and then captain from 1990 to 2006. All up, he played seventy-six games in sixteen World Championships, scoring a little under an average one point a game (22 goals, 46 assists) — an offensive performance in defense that would satisfy most forwards.

When Sydney won the Brown Trophy (U21) in 1987 and 1988, it was 25 year-old Glen Foll in charge at the very beginning of a long coaching career. In Adelaide he became player and Head Coach of the Tigers A and B grades (1990, 1991 and 1995 to the present) and the Red Wings A-Grade team (1992 to 1994). He was coach of the two national championships won by the state's Tange Trophy (U18) team in 1990 and 1991; Head Coach of the National Youth Team (U18) in 1991; and a player-assistant coach of the national men's team between 1990 and 1995. He capped that off coaching the 1995 South Australian Goodall Cup champions, then became Assistant Coach of the National Junior Team in 1997 and 1998. He was assistant coach while a player with the Adelaide Avalanche in the AIHL between 1999 and 2002. He also coached the Roller Sports Australia national team at the World Championships in Chicago in 1995, and the national inline hockey team at the Worlds in Slovakia in 1998.

After a break of twenty-two years, Foll returned to coach the SA Tange squad in 2013. He did the scheduling and stats for the state association in Sydney in the years before moving to Adelaide. He found the association's secretary position vacant and so his time as an administrator continued there as secretary (1991), vice president (1992), and president (1993, 2011, 2012). More recently he was club president of the Adelaide Tigers (2009, 2010). [5]

An accredited IHA referee, he has been officiating ice hockey games since 1982 and inline hockey since 1984.