MORGAN, Troy

BORN AUGUST 31ST 1969 IN SYDNEY AUSTRALIA, the eldest son of Kurt and Margaret, [3] Troy Morgan began the sport at nine with the Canterbury United Peewees. He was the Bantam Top Point Scorer while at the Sydney Icemen in 1984, [2] and he went on to represent his state at the Tange, Brown and Goodall championships, winning the 1988 Goodall Cup coached by Don Switzer. Two more followed in '92 and '96, while he skated for ten years in the NSW Superleague. He won the Canterbury Eagles' one and only CP Air Cup coached by Czech Radim Haup, defeating the Canberra Knights in 1995. [2] He played for the Macquarie Bears, and captained the Sydney Icemen in the SIHL.

Coach John Botterill remembers Morgan in the first years of the National Youth Team program (U18), and his brother Tim represented Australia with the Under-18s in 1998. [2] In 1993 and '94, Morgan represented Australia in attack at the Division 2 World Championships in Slovenia and Spain—the heady days of Coach Ryan Switzer's never repeated assaults on the world stage—representing the country with the likes of Glen Foll, Murray Wand, Charlie Cooper, Chris Blagg, Howie Jones, Pavel Bohacik, Rad Benicky, and Damian Holland.

At 17 or 18, Morgan began coaching with the 1989 NSW Peewee state team. [5] In a career which has so far spanned almost thirty years, he coached state teams to Gold medals at Ginsberg (U13), Defris (U15), Tange (U18), Brown (U23) and Joan McKowen (women's open) championships. [4] He coached the Eagles, and he later became Head Coach of the Sydney Sirens in the Australian Women's Ice Hockey League, where he spent four seasons, 2015 to 2018.

Morgan delivered 41 wins from 57 games with the Sirens (72%), including a red-hot, chilli peppered 22-game win-streak. Preliminary Champions twice, Silver medallists thrice, it all culminated with the companion prize to the Goodall: the 2017 McKowen Trophy. Sound the siren. The Sydney Club's first AWIHL Championship broke the stranglehold of the Melbourne Ice women's team on the national trophy. A NSW team had not won since 2010.

"I was gifted with the best manager anyone could have," said Morgan in 2019. "My mother ran her own business, managed eleven children, [all when] there were five Morgans playing, three sisters and younger brother, Tim. Four of us got to wear the green and gold. I don't know how Mum found the time. I'm still playing alongside Tim and some players that go back to day one 1980".

Margaret [3] was still having babies when Troy started [hockey], according to women's hockey pioneer, Wendy Ovenden, who coached the young Forward in the Macquarie Bantams in the early Eighties. "We sure remember those trips from Cherrybrook to Narrabeen and Canterbury, etc. We never realised it then, just how much time our mums spent driving us to rinks and, of course, they were never close to each other". [1]

Vice president of the Canterbury Eagles between 1993 and '96, Troy Morgan's hockey career as a player, coach and administrator is now approaching the end of a fourth decade.