Kookaburra Stephen Mowlam on journey from Corowa to Olympic gold

BEAU GREENWAY: I imagine growing up in Corowa you would have played a bit of sport. When did you take up hockey?

STEPHEN MOWLAM: I grew up in Corowa and it was a pretty sport-centric little town. I played Aussie rules, rugby league, hockey, tennis, squash, everything. I say it was around under-13s or under-15s I started playing hockey for Corowa. I played there for a number of years and went from there.

BG: So you were a bit of a late bloomer?

SM: In other ways I was definitely. I still played a bit of Aussie rules, but that started to fall off a bit and I was still playing quite a bit of rugby league. Maybe about under-17s I started concentrating a bit more on hockey.

BG: Did you always play goalkeeper?

SM: I vaguely remember playing a little bit on the field as a kid. I liked motorbike riding as well and all the gear I took a bit of a shining to. I don't think many people took a shining to it and that was that.

BG: When did hockey start becoming a bit more serious?

SM: I played for Corowa and played rep hockey for Albury-Wodonga all the way through juniors. I kept for the Spitfires for a couple years, it would have been when I was in year 11 and 12 and maybe the year after high school. I then decided I wanted to have a bit of a crack at it. I remember rocking up to state trials and no-one knew who I was. I tried out for the state under-21 team from the age of 18-19 until I was 21. I made it in my last year, but the year before I made it, I remember trialling really well. The goalkeeper selector at the time came up to me and said 'I'll be honest, we just can't pick you because we don't know who you are.' I was pretty cross because I thought if I've trialled well, I probably deserved a spot. I thought I better move Melbourne and play club hockey. It turned out that goalkeeping selector was a bloke called Colin Batch who the next year was the Victorian under-21 coach. I was playing in Melbourne and he selected me. I didn't really get a run at the start because the goalkeeper ahead of me was one of the national under-21 keepers. Luckily for me he had a bit of a shocker the first couple of games and I stepped in and played quite well. At the end of the tournament I got named in the Junior World Cup team and went from there. Colin Batch is the current Kookaburras coach and 'Batchy' coached me whether it be at state level, national league, Australian Hockey League, Olympic games. I had the same relationship with the guy who saw me at the very start of my career in 1997 to 2008 when I retired.

BG: How long was the progression from there to the national senior debut?

SM: In 1997 we won the Junior World Cup, the first and only time Australia has done it and that team consisted of many players that ended up winning gold in Athens (at the 2004 Olympics). The incumbent goalkeepers in the national squad, I believed I was competitive with them, but maybe that was a bit 'pie in the sky' stuff. One of the goalkeepers Lachlan Dreher, a triple-Olympian, had been around forever and was an amazing goalkeeper and he was the Victoria goalkeeper. I was the number two goalkeeper until 2003 and he retired at the start of 2003 and that's when I made the national squad. If you had of said at the start of 2004 I would be going to the Olympic Games, I believed I could be, but if you're a betting man you would have said no chance.

BG: How did 2004 unfold for you? Did it happen pretty quickly to be thrown into the Olympic team?

SM: I nearly gave it away at the start of 2004 because I'd spent the whole year in the national squad in 2003 and never got a cap. I reckon I'm only player for that to ever happen to. I was pretty jack of it all. There was an important tournament in 2004, the Azlan Shah Cup, but they were taking more of a development team. I was selected on it, but I was told I probably wouldn't be playing a lot. I remember I was on holiday at the time with my now wife (Fleur) and we had to leave New Year's Day to go to Malaysia and I nearly didn't go in my head. When I got to the airport, the goalkeeper they wanted have a look at, Steve Lambert, unfortunately had to have a shoulder reconstruction. One guy in particular probably did me the biggest favour, (former Pakistan captain) Sohail Abbas, who was probably the best drag flicker in the world at the time. I'd never faced him before and we went to the Azlan Shah and came up against Sohail and did really well. We won that tournament, which we really shouldn't have done and from that a number of guys that were in a similar position to me really stood up. It shook a lot up with the whole squad, which it needed to do. We had national league soon after and I obviously played pretty well and won Player of the Tournament. That had never happened before and it's never happened since for a goalkeeper to win that. I guess that solidified the whole 2004 for me, but in my mind I still wasn't certain. I always thought they were going to drop the hammer on me at any second.

BG: So you went into Athens as the main goalkeeper?

SM: They keep you on tenterhooks that's for sure. I understand now that I'm older, they tend to not give too much away. There were still three keepers in the squad and it was really close. As a matter of fact, we went away on a European tour just prior to the Olympics to finalise selection and it was a really stressful trip. Steve Lambert and I were number one and two, in which order who knew. Mark Hickman, who was the number one goalkeeper the year before, was obviously in third spot. 'Lamby' and I went away and I guess in hindsight I was playing really well and was always going to be selected, but I didn't know that. I fractured my humerus on that trip and they rested me after that, so it was a really good opportunity for 'Lamby' to solidify his spot. Unfortunately, they didn't think he played well enough and they dropped him and 'Hicko' came back into the side for the Olympics. I think it was a day out (from the Olympics), but for the first time in my career, the coach said to me I'll be playing every game except one against South Africa. If you didn't play at the Olympics, you didn't get a medal, so you couldn't play the same guys all the time and leave guys on the bench or they wouldn't get a medal. I remember it being really odd being told because I'd never had that happen before.

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BG: I believe it was quite an intense tournament throughout. How did it feel to win gold 2-1 in extra time against the Netherlands?

SM: I think the coaching staff did an incredible job of taking a very young group, who probably shouldn't have won in Athens, and have us focused on the task at hand and not what was going on around us. The final was amazing, but the whole tournament was really tense for us because we were really inexperienced. That whole tournament, we were only just winning games. We beat Argentina by a goal and I remember they had a shot right on the siren and I made one of the better saves of the tournament. If that had of gone in, we wouldn't have made the semis. The same against India, it was goal for goal, but we got that one 4-3 and if we had of lost that we wouldn't have been in the semi-finals. We qualified for the semi-finals because they top-two went through and our last round match was against the Dutch and they actually gave us a bit of a touch up. It was no lay down misere that's for sure.

BG: The Border Mail was on deck to cover your family and friends watching the gold medal game at home in Corowa, did you opt not to have anyone come to Athens?

SM: The irony of it all was I sort of told them I didn't want them there, not because of the pressure, I just thought I wouldn't get selected so maybe don't book your ticket because it was bloody expensive for them to go. I told Fleur, my now wife and family 'it's not that big of a deal, I probably won't make it so don't book your tickets'. That was the stupidest thing I've ever done. If I had my time again, even if you're a 10 per cent chance of making it, get your whole family to book their tickets. One of the Hockeyroos, Louise Dobson, who was a country Victoria girl as well and was going to her third Olympics and we were the only two that didn't have family going along. I think they had a pretty good time at home that's for sure.

BG: Many believed it would be the start of a dynasty for the Kookaburras. Did you think it was?

SM: The funny thing is you say overachieve and underachieve, but those major tournaments - World Cups and Olympic games, those semi-finals are the hardest games you'll ever play in your life. A lot of the European teams, they don't tank or anything like that, but they really time their run for those major tournaments so well. We might go out and flog Holland 5-0 or 6-0 a year out from an Olympics or you might even beat them in a practice match a couple of months before the Olympics, but you know when it comes to a semi-final, it's a completely different game. We probably overachieved a little in Athens and I would say we probably underachieved from there. In 2006 we got silver at the World Cup and that was probably when that team was at its absolute peak. We went through the tournament really well, not like the Olympics. We got to the final and I think we were winning 3-1 and got a bit ahead of ourselves and lost 4-3 to Germany. That was pretty devastating for the group. We had Champions Trophy and Commonwealth Games wins in between, but really it was about World Cups and Olympic Games.

BG: Why did you choose to take a year off from the Australian team in 2006?

SM: I retired at the end of 2006 and I came back in 2008 for a year, but it was a mistake. At the end of 2006 I was World Goalkeeper and things were going pretty well, so I thought I'd 'retire' but just take a year off. I probably got back to where I was, but I trained way too hard and blew my knee out in the gym. I actually got injured just before the (2008) Olympics. I went away, but I did it again over there and didn't get to play. We underachieved there for sure. I thought we were way more of a chance in 2008 than in 2004, but we went down 6-3 to Spain in a semi-final which you would have thought we'd win probably 4-0. People say it's a bit of a golden age for the Kookaburras and stuff like that, but we're the most medalled team in Australian Olympic history. They've always pretty much got bronze or silver, we've just only ever won one gold in the men's.

BG: Hockey maybe doesn't get the recognition of other sports in Australia. How does that sit with you?

SM: I'm comfortable with that. Australia is a funny place. You have a different perspective after playing international sport. You go to India and Pakistan and you're mobbed. India is the only place I've been recognised on the street, they know exactly who you are and most of the time they still want to talk about cricket (laughs). You got to Holland and Germany and even though it's not football (soccer), it's a well-respected sport. At the end of the day, you're paid professionally as a Kookaburra and there's a few competitions around the world where you can make pretty good money, but it's an amateur sport really. I'm a structural engineer and I was a structural engineer and I studied. I'm pretty comfortable with the amount of recognition hockey gets. It's not about that, it's a real club sport, an inclusive sport for both genders, so I'm more proud of things like that. That's why I'm involved with hockey, not for television rights. It's just crazy the amount of professional sport that is supported in Australia, compared to every other country in the world bar the US. The US is still 300-odd million people. How Australia can play professional netball, professional Aussie rules, professional rugby league, professional rugby union with a population of 25 million is crazy. You look at New Zealand and it's just rugby a bit of netball. There's enough recognition there in my opinion. We get the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. A lot of AFL teams and coaches like Alistair Clarkson spent a lot of time with us finding out what we did and how we did it because we were a team sport in the AIS and the AIS was quite cutting edge at the time. I think there's a real respect for hockey players as athletes from other sports. One of Nat Fyfe's best mates is Aran Zalewski, the captain of the Kookaburras. We get enough recognition, whether it's the general public or other elite sportsmen, I'm happy.

BG: Do you still follow the Kookaburras closely? Where do you think they're at currently?

SM: Colin Batch is the head coach now and I had plenty of times I was frustrated with him, but I consider 'Batchy' a really good friend and mentor, so I'm still in contact with him. I know they were pretty upset with the postponement of the Olympics. You can't whinge because there's people going through a heck of a lot worse than an Olympic athlete, so you've got to have a bit of perspective. There's a lot that goes into the timing of something like that for an athlete and for it to change, through no fault of anyone's, was pretty tough for the group. It's the first time the national squad has been disbanded from Perth I think since the early 90s. It threw everything on its head. The current group is amazing. We had a reunion last year at the Olympic qualifiers in Rockhampton and they got all the 2004 Kookaburras together to play an exhibition match before the Kookaburras played New Zealand for Olympic qualification. We spent quite a lot of time with the current group, but mind you half the players from the 2004 Kookaburras are assistant coaches or coaches. It seems like a really down to earth, humble group and they're so good. If you're a betting man you'd have your money on them and the Games being postponed will probably play into their hands a bit. The tougher things get, typically Australians and maybe Kiwis kind of don't let it bug us too much and just get on with it. But I've been involved for too long and watching for too long to know you can be the greatest team in the world by a long shot, but come to an Olympic semi-final it's a flip of the coin. People are just so desperate. In a round match you're not going to cop a stick or a ball to the head, but in an Olympic semi-final, there's men and women willing to do anything. Everyone rises.

BG: A fellow Border product Jocelyn Bartram is looking to follow in your footsteps next year and go to the Olympics with the Hockeyroos. Do you know Jocelyn well?

SM: Jocelyn's time will come, don't worry about that and it only takes an injury, but Rachael Lynch is a pretty special keeper. She's been World Goalkeeper for a number of years and she's carried the Hockeyroos a little bit. Rach was probably where Jocelyn is now when I was coming towards the end of my career. I probably know Rach a bit better than Jocelyn, but I know Paul Gaudin and the Hockeyroos coaching staff hold Jocelyn in pretty high regard.