Hall, Phil

BORN ABOUT 1940 in Whitby ON Canada, he attended school there and developed in the local hockey leagues. He also played lacrosse with Charlie Grandy and Elgin Luke in the Whitby Red Wings of the Ontario Junior A Lacrosse League. In 1960, they won the Iroquois Trophy and represented Eastern Canada in the finals of the Minto Cup, awarded annually to the national junior champion. They lost to the Westminster Salmonbellies of Vancouver.

Arriving in Australia in the early 60s, Grandy and Luke followed. Hall was a forward for the 1963 NSW Premiers, St George, where he soon became Captain. He won back-to-back state premierships with the Saints in 1964 and 1965 and the Australia Club Championship in 1964. The club's ninth Premiership in 1964 set a new state record and established St George as the most successful club of all time in New South Wales.

He first represented his state in his early twenties in the 1963 Goodall Cup, winning the trophy back-to-back in 1963 and 1964. He continued to play in state teams for many years, coached by Olympian, Rob Dewhurst, from 1965.

He first represented Australia in the National Men's Ice Hockey Team at the Olympic Qualification series in Japan in 1963-64, appointed Alternate Captain with Noel Derrick and Captain Rus Jones. In November 1983 in Tokyo, Team Australia lost the Asian Oceania playoffs at the 1964 Innsbruck Games to Japan, 17-1 and 17-6. The squad was also defeated in a series of exhibition games against an All Tokyo Team, 1-12, All Hakairo, 0-12, and Fujishama Bank, 2-6.

In 1965-6, he was Manager of the Prince Alfred Park ice rink in Sydney for the lessee, NSW Ice Hockey and Sports Club Ltd, a peak body with representation from all three ice sports. The company won the City of Sydney Council tender to run the rink.

He won the state Premiership with the Saints again in 1967, then yet again back-to-back in 1969 and 1970. His Club was also runner-up in the Australian Club Championships in 1969, defeated 6-2 by Victoria's Monarchs at St Moritz in Melbourne with Jim Lynch, John Kelly, Bill Hay, Eddie Nedelkov, Len Thiessen, Roddy Bruce and Jim Oriendoff. He won his third and last Goodall Cup the same year.

Still the State's Most Successful Club by the time of its twelfth premiership in 1970, Hall's Saints won a second Australian Club Championship in 1970. He was thirty and it was the last state or national title the club would win. The Saints continued for another ten years until merging with the Sydney Icemen in 1981, 35 years after they began.

He joined the Gold Coast Vikings up north, winning the 1983 Gold Coast league, and toured with the Gold Coast team that won the Hannimex Cup in Sydney in 1983, at the age of 43. From the time of his arrival in 1962, Phil Hall involved himself in the promotion of ice hockey in New South Wales and Queensland for almost twenty years.