Barry Dancer - Dancer leads team turnaround
Issue: Volume 27 Number 4
In August this year, as the Australian men’s hockey team celebrated their Athens Olympics gold medal and also the end of decades of Olympic near-misses, their coach, Barry Dancer, stood up in the stands of the Helliniko Olympic complex smiling and quietly observing the team’s celebrations.
It was not the first time that Barry had chosen to be on the outside looking in on the Australian men’s hockey team. In fact, it seems to be an approach that affords him a great deal of perspective.
He did it at the1998 Commonwealth Games when, as coach of the bronze-medal winning English national side, he watched the Australians take the coveted gold.
He did it in the following year, as coach of the fifth-placed English side, when the Australian team won the Champions Trophy.
He was also there as Great Britain coach at the Sydney 2000 Olympics when the Australians could only manage a disappointing bronze, three places ahead of the British squad.
Barry has not always been on the outside. As an Australian player, he too has tasted the disappointment of missing out on Olympic gold, winning silver as part of the 1976 Olympic team. He coached the Australian Under-21 team between 1991 and 1997 and was an assistant coach in the Australian Institute of Sport hockey program at the same time.
This complex combination of experiences as team member, coach and opposing coach has given the 52-year-old former mathematics teacher a somewhat unique perspective of the changing fortunes of Australian men’s hockey.
‘Immediately before being offered the position [as Australian Head Coach] I was looking on as an observer,’ Barry says.
‘What I could see even then was that the team needed more flexibility, more versatility. The players needed to generate more unpredictability in their playing style when they had the ball. I could see there was scope for players to grow, but they needed to take that step.’
When Barry took up the position of Head Coach following the 2000 Olympics, the man others describe as analytical, methodical and measured again took a step back to plan the way forward.
‘I didn’t know much about the emerging group and I was keen to take a closer look at them, but keeping in mind that there was still a core group of Australian players who provided a strong foundation.
‘Among all the players there was definitely scope to make strong gains in physical development. I don’t know if the men’s program up to this point had embraced strength development, but I saw this as essential to injury prevention as well as general fitness levels.’
Barry began by assessing every individual in the squad, not only looking at their playing history, but also their weekly training programs, their individual needs and goals.
He found opportunities to share resources and time more equally across the squad. He listened to each individual and found ways to meet that athlete’s needs. He promoted what he calls a ‘socialist’ ethos that encouraged a greater community spirit among the team. He instilled in each of them a personal ambition to improve.
‘These were the things that gave us the best chance. They were the ingredients necessary to grow,’ Barry says.
‘We were also fortunate that we had very strong support services that we could integrate more into the program … sports science, sports medicine and the like.
‘These changes brought with them an injection of enthusiasm, new people who brought with them an infectious element.’
Barry says he fostered a greater element of selflessness among the squad. ‘This became particularly important towards the latter part of our Olympic campaign. There had to be a strong element of trust and openness. Each person had to be prepared to trust, to take calculated risks and also to realise that they didn’t want to die wondering “what if?”.’
These are qualities that Barry himself seems to have taken to heart from an early age. Growing up in Ipswich, Queensland, he played club hockey and coached junior teams. ‘I suppose spending my formative years in Ipswich has played a large part in my values systems. Those community values I carried forward with me.’
Early in his career, Barry had no long-term ambition to become a coach. He coached A Grade club teams and intercity teams in Ipswich while he was playing internationally, but says he was fortunate to make a transition to coaching before the end of his time as a player.
‘I suppose I had always had an interest in teaching and in science and, as my interest in playing was waning, my interest in coaching was rising. I was very fortunate in 1990 to be approached to take on a position at the Australian Institute of Sport as an Assistant Coach working with Richard Agiss and Frank Murray. I went into an environment with coaches I could learn from, science and technical people who were world leaders and opportunities for me to learn and develop.’
By the end of the 1990s, Barry was looking for new opportunities and left for England to ‘gain experience, confidence and credibility’ as a coach to the English hockey team.
It was the first time that the England Hockey Association had appointed an international full-time coach. The move paid off, with England improving so much under Barry’s tutelage that they were able to give the Australian side a run for their money in the semifinals of the 1998 Commonwealth Games before losing out in extra time.
Which brings us back to that Athens Olympics gold-medal match when the Australians and the Dutch were tied at 1–1 in extra time. Was Barry nervous? Did he have visions of the dreaded 58-year Olympic hoodoo for the men’s team?
‘No,’ Barry says. ‘I grew in confidence as the competition went on. We had played the Netherlands more than anyone else in the three or four years leading up to the match, so I was confident we had their measure.
‘In the hours approaching the match there was little for me to do but unleash the group. I had confidence in their ability to achieve what they set out to achieve.’
And when the referee signalled the end of the match? ‘Instantaneously there was great excitement,’ Barry recalls. ‘I was with sport psychologist Neil McLean way up in the stands. It was an opportunity to observe the group and their celebrations and enjoy the satisfaction of seeing a group of athletes committed to each other over a long period of time take pleasure in what they had done, and which other people around the hockey community and more broadly could enjoy.’
Yet even then, Barry was looking to the future and thinking about what it would mean for the players.
‘We’re still without sponsors and yet we’re talking about a group that epitomises what it is to be a successful team. We travel the world, we have many special qualities and we would be a very good vehicle for sponsorship.
‘I know that the team will face lots of challenges like this in the future. There will also be greater expectations placed on them from people and the media, there will be broader demands on their time both on field and off. We need to manage that well, but not lose sight of where we’ve come from.
‘I have a real genuine belief that we can still improve as a team and that many of these players have their best hockey ahead of them.’
