If you have ever watched the Kookaburras played in the decade you could not have not noticed the skill finesse, high level of strategic decisiveness, winning attributes, level headiness, stability, and leadership skills of Mark Knowles. When the current Kookaburras captain decides to retire and hopefully that is not too soon he will leave for his predecessor some ‘pretty big shoes to fill’
Mark Knowles with parents Ryan and Barbara
Mark Knowles has held a hockey stick from the time he could hold anything. He is the son of talented hockey playing parents and devotes to the sport, Ryan and Barbara Knowles. He received the right genes and spent his growing life at the Rockhampton Hockey Fields belting a hockey ball around at every available moment. The Knowles family, like the Dwyer family and the Gohdes family, who all hail from Rockhampton in Queensland, symbolise why hockey is a great family sport.
Mark Knowles, Jamie Dwyer, Matt Gohdes are the ‘sons’ of Rockhampton Hockey Association
Mark, who has around 300 International caps to his credit, has an impressive personal player profile
- 2004 gold medallist, 2008-12 bronze medallist
- Commonwealth Games gold medallist; 2006, 2010, 2014
- World Cup silver medallist 2006, gold medallist 2010, 2014
- World Young Player of the Year 2007;
- FIH World All Stars Team 2007, 2009;
- World Cup Player of the Tournament 2014;
- Commonwealth Games closing ceremony flag bearer 2014;
- Kookaburras Player of the World Cup 2014;
- Kookaburras Player of the Year; International Player of the Year 2012, 2013, 2014
However to carry on a legacy of hard work and humility in one of Australia’s most successful sporting teams – that is what matters most to him.
Knowles told Australian Regional Media, “Honestly, I’ve always been a leader and wanted to do it. For me, the most important thing is the legacy I hope to leave. If I can leave Australian hockey in better shape than when I started in the team, I’ll be very proud. Captaining my country is such a huge honour and I don’t downplay it to anyone.”
Indeed, Knowles is a himself is a committed family man away from his demanding schedule, where he’s required to travel the world playing the game he has always loved. This family orientated commitment is evident when viewing how he leads his Kookaburra team mates
Mark is 33 years old which could place him in a position where he would be contemplating retirement form the International arena. Internal and external pressures could bring this decision to a head. However there is everything about Mark Knowles that tells me just keep going should your passion be intact to do so. If there is a player that gets better with age it is he and his stabilising presence on the field as the ‘rock’ in defence and ‘game thinker’ extraordinaire is imperative as the new blood in the Kookaburras team await to mature.
Mark Knowles has still much to give to the Kookaburras as they work towards redemption at the next Olympics in Tokyo. Earlier this year there was an interview with Mark in the Morning Bulletin (Pam McKay writer). It is one of the best hockey interviews this writer has seen and as such worthy of sharing again to those who have not seen. Why? It supports what has been written about the ‘war horse’ Kookaburra captain and why he is respected globally for his ongoing contribution to hockey. Some of the interview has been removed due to time lapse. Amongst the interview transcripts we can gain greater insight into Australia’s disappointment at Rio which for many hockey passionate Australians still resonates.
The Kookaburras didn’t get the result they wanted at the Rio Olympics. Can you put your finger on what went wrong?
I’ve been trying to for four or five months now and no, not one specific thing. I think a number of factors always lead to a poor performance of a highly successful team. Obviously, individual errors was a big one where players were just down on form but there’s a few other things. We didn’t cope with the travel very well, I think our preparation was slightly off there on knowing the South American conditions and the travel and how long it would take us to get over that, a couple of guys got really sick at the start of the tournament, we lost the match against Spain – match two – which was something that we didn’t expect and I think really jolted a few of the younger guys especially, their confidence in maybe where we were at.
It was a range of things but I think as individuals we didn’t play as well as we needed to and if you want to be really good you need to have a large number of top performers and we just didn’t have that unfortunately.
We were still very much good enough. One thing that we did say and we made very clear to everyone was it’s probably the first Olympics where any of the top seven teams in the world can win and people laughed at us when we said that and No.7 won the Olympic gold medal and beat No.6 in the final and that’s never happened before. I think that shows the strength of the hockey world and it also shows how much you have to be on task and on top of your job every minute in every game.
It wasn’t an ideal draw for you in Rio. Can you give us an idea of what your schedule was like?
Four of the five matches were at 8.30 at night, it was the first Olympics we’d ever had quarter-finals, it was the first Olympics we’d ever had back-to-back matches and we were starting our match at 8.30 at night, finishing at 11, getting home to the village about midnight, still having to have dinner, still having to do a recovery session, still trying to get to bed to wake up the next morning by 10 o’clock to have a video meeting, a debrief, a pre-match meeting, a warm-up, lunch, dinner for an 8.30 at night game the next day, so some of those were factors but certainly not excuses.
What was the talk after the Rio campaign when the playing group got back to Perth?
We haven’t really regrouped properly we’ve had a really disjointed period. We’ve had seven guys leave to play in Europe, we’ve had our coach depart, assistant coach go to the national women’s job, high-performance director of Hockey Australia has moved on, so it has been disjointed, but I think the players fully understand that it was a massive missed opportunity. I think it will hit some now and it will hit some in a few years’ time when we truly understand how big of an opportunity we missed there. But I think we have a new coach now, there is a lot of reasons to be looking forward. Some players have moved on, some have retired, but 2017 brings a new challenge. Players will all react differently but once we come together in March after the Hockey India League in the next couple of months we should be raring to go for the year.
What are you expecting from the Kookaburras’ new coach Colin Batch?
Colin Batch was the assistant coach of the Kookaburras 2001 to 2008, a highly successful time there with the Olympic gold medal. I’m the only one left now with Jamie (Dwyer) moving on and hanging up the boots. I know Batchy really well and I think he will bring a tough mentality, he’s very focused, highly driven in his own right from being a player for Australia but also in his coaching sense.
I think the two things I’m looking forward to most are he coached Belgium, who were Olympic silver medallists back in 2012, when they were really on the up, so we get a little bit of that European flavour that he’ll bring, and also he’s been New Zealand men’s coach for the last four years so we get to find out a little bit about what such a close rival of ours plans to play against us and I’m very interested to see first-hand knowledge of what he would have spoken to New Zealand or Belgium about us.
Fellow Rockhampton player Matt Gohdes has not been named in the Kookaburras squad for 2017. Is there still an opportunity for him to work his way back in?
He’s one of the guys who definitely has a chance to come back in. He’s playing in Europe until June so that’s one of the reasons I suppose, he didn’t play in the Australian Hockey League in October due to the European season so a few of those things would go against him but he’s young enough, he’s good enough. The coach knows that, we know that, he knows that – it’s just whether he wants it now. I really hope he does because the Commonwealth Games for him on the Gold Coast should be a big drawcard, like it is for me, so he’s certainly capable of coming back in later in 2017.
You’ve been to four Olympics. How realistic is Tokyo 2020 for you?
At the moment, not that realistic, I would say. I think I could do and I take a lot out of Jamie (Dwyer) being 37 and playing at the Olympics. I take a lot out of what he was able to do, how we conducted himself and sorted his body and kept himself in touch and I think that I can do that. But you also get to a stage where the game moves on, there’s younger people around, there’s different ideas, there’s more travel away from a young family, so four years at the moment for me, I’m not looking at four years. I’m not writing it off but I’m not saying I’ll be there.
Definitely two years – the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, the World Cup in ’18 – they still excite me, they still interest me. I still think I’m highly motivated and highly driven to be successful myself and also as a part of the team. At the moment, I think I’ll set myself shorter goals than four years. I think Gold Coast Commonwealth Games … it’s only 15 months away now and that’s a very small amount of time in professional sport.
Can you tell us about your decision to move back to Brisbane from Perth?
I’ve been in Perth with (wife) Kel for 14 years. It’s a long time to be in a state far away from your family and the comfort of your friends. We made the decision to move back at the end of last year. Flynn, our young fella, starts in Prep next year five days a week, we just wanted to be a little bit more settled, more travel for me with India and the Australian commitments and I didn’t want to put Kel through that on her own again for another period of time.
I’ve been back for four weeks now and it just feels right. It feels exactly how I wanted it to. I think the kids are happy, Kel feels more comfortable with her parents being able to come down more often, mum and dad have been down already for the boys’ birthdays just for the weekend.
I’m training with a new coach and a group of young Queensland boys who are very keen, they’re enthusiastic. It’s different and new for me and not too often when you’ve played international sport for 14 years do you get a spark like this. It feels new and interesting and that’s really what I wanted so it’s been good.
I head back now to train again for a couple of weeks before I head to India so it’s very interesting, it’s exciting and I just hope it’s a real refresher for me for international hockey, for life, and that was the aim of it.
Can you talk a bit about what is very much a new-look Kookaburras squad for 2017.
There’s 11 changes from this year in the squad of 30 so it’s a big turnover. The squad’s dropped down to 23 so there’s less players. I think that’s what Batchy’s done in New Zealand, he’s worked with a smaller pool of players and maybe with him coming in new he wanted to focus really closely on the group he feels he can work with and then there’s also a few spots there free for people hopefully like Matty who stand up at the early part or the middle of 2017 to come back in before the Comm Games.
There’s the Junior World Cup guys who just finished fourth in India earlier this month who have the potential to come in, and then there’s a good group of core players who hopefully we can work with and continue to grow.
What would your message be to the new players in the squad?
I just think take every opportunity. I’ve spoken to all of them personally myself as the captain but as a leader and a guy who’s been through it and I just said, “Grab it with both hands, you don’t want to let these opportunities slip and you want to get in there. You’ve got an opportunity now as one of the best 23 players in Australia.” Most of those guys are feeling good, they’re very excited, most of them are fairly nervous and quite hesitant about how it will all go but we won’t know until June or July if it’s worked. You need three or four or five months in Perth training with the national coach and some of those senior players to really fit in and I think that’s what those guys are looking forward to.
Are you feeling any extra pressure or added responsibility being the elder statesman in the squad?
Not really, I’ve done that for the large part of my career, it’s the type of person I am. I like leading from the front. Leadership is something I’ve tried to keep working on and try to keep improving because, like anything, if you stand still and become stagnant people will stop listening so you have to continually change your messages, you have to continually try and influence different groups and different people in the squads and I think that’s just what I’m trying to do.
I get to do it in a different way now, not being in front of the guys every day in Perth. Being back in Brisbane I get to try and do it when I come in as a fresh voice and a fresh face into that Perth training group or when I meet up with the guys on tour. It’s going to be a challenge for me, it’s going to be certainly something that I’ll need to keep working on but I’m looking forward to that part of it, not being front and centre every day, just having a bit of spark for myself as much as the younger guys.
Can you single out the greatest achievement of your career?
There’s two – the Olympic Games gold in 2004 is what you dream of, as a kid what I wanted to do, but growing up in Rocky playing on the grass fields here you would never think you could do it. So that, the first and only gold medal for men’s hockey, that’s by far as good as anything could get. But I was young, I’d only been in the team for six months, I probably didn’t understand the true enormity of that.
The World Cup in 2014, what we did as a team in that tournament was just unbelievable. A drop-in hockey field in a soccer stadium in front of the Dutch home crowd, 17,000, and to win a World Cup final the way we did, the hockey we played, how we conducted ourselves, what other teams thought of us, what other teams saw in us and what other people in the crowd and the hockey world saw in that tournament will maybe or probably never be done again so they’re the two standouts for me
Source; adapted Morning Bulletin interview
