Can Australian hockey make it back to the Winter Olympics?

My 10 year old son recently became extremely interested in ice hockey. I think he saw some sort of a presentation about the sport on a kids tv show. We had never even been ice skating. He went to his first training session in Oakleigh/ Melbourne last night and loved it. Whizzing about on ice skates with a stick in his hand chasing and dodging other skaters is his idea of having a huge amount of fun. I can understand the attraction. The other people there were welcoming and friendly. Son is like the proverbial pig in ..... Brand new ice hockey Mum.

Although I believe returning Australia to the winter Olympics by 2018 is a bit far fetched. AIHL is correct in saying the sport has history almost as old as the AFL or VFL in Australia. Currently in QLD there is no spaces for any new players at the only two rinks available in Brisbane. The sport is incredibly popular, and its understandable as too why. Its faster than any other team sport, its rough, its awesome.

Exactly Bever. I attended many Knights fixtures in the good old days. Of course footy park is no longer and whats more bemusing is that the ACT govt are redeveloping it as an AFL facility in attracting future big leagKe games - extraordinary. I would often attend post game celebrations at this venue, with the Knights, (named after senator knight believe it or not) and my folks back then. The ACTAFL were extremely supportive of the Ice Hockey League in those early years. My parents would often billet visiting Canuks who had been coerced out here to play for the Knights, often young blokes with way too much attitude for their own good. I never played the game since I didn't take much to skating. I did however play some 'Broom Ball' games, to my regret and grew up on skis, so i really do hold some affection for Ice Hockey and the the ever shrinking season that is winter in this part of the world. Hope to get back to see how the standard has progressed this season with a mate who also skated a bit in Melbourne in the days of St Moritz. His daughter is a very keen figure skater here in Canberra, so his Hockey interest has been somewhat renewed. Thanks for sharing a bit of the old Canberra with me again Bever! Cheers

Great live, saw a few Canberra Knights games, can be quite dangerous with the puck flying around if you are not paying attention (as a fan), think they used to hang out at Footy Park club in Woden. From memory mostly Canucks were the backbone of the team, but i also cannot follow the puck on the tele. Maybe like squash it does not translate well to tele.

Australia's Ice Hockey League tends to be filled with ex pat Canuks and Fins etc, is it not? We struggle to beat NZ as far as Southern Hemisphere bragging rights go, so the status of the game has to be less than ordinary down under, to be sure. I expect the Kiwis also rely very much on expats to sustain their domestic League and with only 5 mill compared to our 20 mill population, that they are competitive with Aust Ice Hockey at all, says much about the calibre of ice Hockey in this part of the world. Cheers

Rinks are expensive to run and in a country i.e Oz where H20 is less than abundant, it is far from environmentally friendly. Then much of Oz struggles to keep the grass up to footy ovals given the big dry that is climate change and thats proving to be more and more expensive and dangerous to players. I still maintain that Ice Hockey, as with all winter sports, is elitist in as much as that it's NOT accessible to the average Ozzie kid, compared to the Nth Hemisphere countries where they learn to skate on frozen ponds at 3 and 4 years of age - gratis. I actually know quite alot about the game, following it from a young age since my old man played in the 40's and 50's in Melbourne for a both the Bears and Black Hawks, representing Vic as well as campaigning long and hard to get a rink and Hockey comp up and running in Canberra after moving their in the 60's. I have travelled throughout Canada over 4 months in the 80's, watching hockey as I went. I love the game as a live experience however it is way to difficult to follow on tele, due in the main to the speed of the contest and the very confined space in which it is played. Cheers

Australia missed the bronze medal in Football (soccer) in the 1992 olympics by a single goal & finished 4th in the world. In the last world cup Austraila was in the last 16 in the world cup, they also lost to a last minute penalty (still hurts) to the eventual world cup winner. This is a sport that has over 200 nations from hot & cold climates competing in. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

Your comparison is very interesting .. but it shows nothing. Yes AFL and Rugby League have limited international competiton ... while Rugby Union and Soccer have less support and players overall .. but greater international competition. All 4 sports, like ice hockey, have also been played in Australia for mor than 100 years, but the point is that all 4 have hunreds of thousands of players and even more spectator support. In contrast between 2004 and 2009 Australia had between 1400 and 1700 senior players and between 900 and 800 junior players!!! Most Australian sports actually have a lot more juniors than seniors ... Ice Hockey is the reverse because people are not interested in it. Reading the Australian Ice Hockey Website ... there are currently 22 ice rinks in Australia .. that is an ice rink for every 85 players. If ice hockey was a rapidly growing sport .. and ice rinks were full every weekend .. of players and spectators .. you might have a point .. but they are not and you dont. As someone said above ... the government will build facillities ... if there is a demand .. but it makes no sense to build facillities for a sport that simply isnt on the radar in Australia. I also dont understand yorur comparison with skiing .. you are just reinforcing the point that while Aussies do like to go to the mountains to go skiing once or twice a year they dont care about ice hockey! If they did there would be at leas tens of thousands of players. Australia has consistantly been ranked between 27 and 33rd in the world in ice hockey for the last 15 years ... with little improvement. There is no justification for pouring government money into a black hole for a small group of fans of a sport foreign to most australians.

Just to respond to the comparison with soccer. Soccer is the biggest participation sport here by a country mile so any government investment in the sport is comparable to canadian investment in ice hockey - its money well spent because it'd be for the benefit of many. It's hard to believe that there's a grass-roots need or want for more rinks. I know the 'build it they will come' would play a part - it looks a fun game but very inaccessible. Once funding is given to obscure sports at the top end then it's all about bang for buck. Would making the olympics in hockey give us enough joy, recognition etc to justify the spend. Maybe it would.

When I was a kid my parents took me to St Moritz, where those 1960 old timers trained. Australia will never be an Olympic medal contender in ice hockey and taxpayers money should not be spent to change that.

Sharminator compare for a moment the "grass based winter sports" refered to, Rugby league, played mainly in just two states in Australia and at best 5 or 6 other countries internationally at high levels - ice hockey as a winter example, as a sport that has been played for over 100 years in Australia and having a national league thats played by teams in four different states!! a comparision also with other winter ice/snow sports is snow skiing in Australia which has over 10 resorts with some at international standard and for instance perisher blue having over one million skier days a season makes winter sports more than just a minor concern. http://www.asaa.org.au/templates/asa/page/page_standard.php?secID=871

"I know it’s hard to believe when it gets no media interest, but the sport is far more developed in Australia than most Aussies would recognise" Oh god ... now we are going to start getting the old Soccer complaint that the Australian media is biased against another minority sport. Reality is .. Australia isnt and never will be a haven for winter snow or ice based sports, and they will never become that popular. Most Aussies like a bit of sun ... as opposed to wrestling on ice .. and in the winter a grass based winter sport. I dont think that having the best league in the Southern Hemisphere means much .. I havnt seen any African or South American governments prepared to waste their money on ice rinks. Reality is .. as a sunny country .. ice hockey is never going to get much public suppport or participation ... its a waste of money and time asking for more olympic or government funding ... not justified at all.

I reckon our involvement in any Winter Olympic disipline in a waste of $ and quite obscene actually since these sports are extremely elitist as far as accessibility in this country goes.. All our successful winter athletes live in the Northern hemisphere anyway - they have to. It's a credit to them that they present as competitive at all, given that the Winter season hardly exists in Australia. A reasonable analogy might be a Canuk winning a world crown of surfing. Focus more on our water sports i.e. Swimming and Surfing. Winter is a very small season, ever shrinking with the changing of the climate and limited to a very small demographic, geographically speaking. Cheers

Very hard to see a country with virtually zero natural ice ever gaining a foothold once the two weeks of prime-time are up. The article is 100% correct - it's all about accessibility. But the only way they'll build more suburban ice rinks is if they are commercially viable and the 'increased national interest' in ice sports will quickly melt away. sorry i had to go there

That Dale Begg guy in the Olympics is Canadian .. get him to bring over some of his cousins to play ice hockey for us!

The only way we could be competitive is to naturalise Canadian / Eastern european expats. They form the basis for the quaility players in the AIHL already.

Is anyone in Australia actually interested in ice hockey? I enjoyed watching a bit of it on the tele .. but Im not about to go and play it ... Its a nice idea that we double players, rinks etc and compete with countries where it snows for 6 months a year ... but I dont think there is much a tradition of the sport in Australia, and with limited interest and player numbers, I think building ice rinks willy nilly is a bit of a waste of money.