Iconic Hockey Coaches
Written by; Tao MacLeod
It’s time to celebrate the personalities in hockey. There is a long list of brilliant people who have coached within the game and provided us with plenty of entertainment over the years. Coaches direct the tactics and strategy of a team. They pick the players, as well as taking the lead in setting the culture and ethos of a squad. There is a wide ranging array of responsibilities within a coach’s or manager’s remit, allowing him or her to have a variety of ways to move things forward.
In this list of iconic hockey coaches, I have used a set of criteria that includes success, status and innovation to a certain extent, but also the individuals public persona. I’ve gone for putting the names down in alphabetical order, instead of any other specific arrangement. People will inevitably disagree with me in some shape, or form, but I’ve predominately gone for those who I find interesting, made me smile and/or have helped me to enjoy hockey a little bit more. There are six coaches on this list, as six is the magic number in hockey…

Alyson Annan
Hailing from Australia, she was a very successful player, in her own right. In 2003 she hung up her stick and became a coach within the Dutch league, taking on HC Klein Zwitserland, then Amsterdamsche Hockey and Bandy Club. Having assisted Marc Lammers with the Dutch National Team, in 2004, she became the head coach of her adoptive nation in 2015. Here she went on to take her women’s side to two Olympic finals, winning in Tokyo 2020, as well as lifting the 2018 World Cup. By the time the 2022 World Cup had come around, she had taken on a new project, coaching the Chinese women’s team and helping them to play some good hockey along the way. In 2013 Annan was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
Max Caldas

As a player, the younger Maximiliano was a defender for the Argentine national team and went to both the 1996 and 2004 Olympic Games. He retired due to injury, going on to coach in the Dutch Hoofdklasse, where he had been playing at the time. After working at club level, he became the assistant coach of the Dutch women’s team for the 2006 Olympic Games, where the side won the gold medal. Caldas became the head coach in 2010, winning the 2012 Olympic hockey tournament, the 2013 World League and the 2014 World Cup, in the Hague. At the time of writing, Caldas is the head coach of Spain’s men’s team. He’s in here, in no small part, due to his personality. He’s a big man, with a strong personality. In pre and post match interviews he fills out the camera, but with that he brings a friendliness and, dare I say, a subtle sense of humour. He comes across as a big, brash teddy bear.

Ric Charlesworth
The second Australian on the list, he could also have been on a list of iconic hockey players. Richard Ian Charlesworth is definitely somebody who has fulfilled his potential. Aside from hockey, he played A Grade cricket for Western Australia, worked as a doctor, after achieving a medical degree in 1976 and was elected to the Australian Parliament in 1983, representing the Labor Party as the Federal Member for Perth. After leaving politics Charlesworth became the head coach of the Australian women’s hockey team, in 1993. Here he oversaw an overwhelmingly successful period, during a seven year period. He managed the winning of four gold medals at the Champions Trophy, two World Cup victories and Olympic Games tournaments and the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Before taking on the head coaching role of the men’s team in 2009, he was also a technical advisor to the Indian men’s and women’s national teams. With the Kookaburras he guided them to victory at the Champions Trophy three times, another Commonwealth Games title and two more World Cups, before resigning in 2014. He has since helped out his compatriot Alyson Annan with the Chinese national team, at the 2022 World Cup. Charlesworth has written several books, in one of them he described how the works of William Shakespeare has provided inspiration for him in his life and his coaching.
Roelant Oltmans
The Dutchman can easily be described as a journeyman. He is a well travelled hockey coach of international calibre, he’s even worked as a technical director for football club NAC Breda. As the coach of the Netherlands women’s squad, he led the side to World Cup victory in 1990. After moving across to the men’s setup his team won the same competition in 1998. Since then, Oltmans has gone around the world. Aside from casting his eye over club sides Klein Zwitserland and Kampong, he has had stints with Pakistan (twice), India and Malaysia, as well as having returned to the Dutch men’s team in 2005. His career has taken him to tournaments including the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, the Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games, as well as the aforementioned World Cup. He is somebody that I would love to sit down with in a pub in order to pick his brains about coaching.
Roger Self OBE
The only British coach on this list, the Welshman had a strong impact on the current state of hockey within the UK. His crowning glory came at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, with the Great Britain’s men winning the gold medal in the hockey tournament. This was done with an array of players from across the UK, all of whom were amateurs. This status of the players throw up specific challenges and Self was instrumental in arranging agreements with employers for time off for his squad when they were away on tour. A strong willed man, he additionally helped to create a structure that has led to the centralised system for English and British hockey players in order to challenge for international titles. The book Seoul Gold, by Rod Gilmour, goes into more detail and is well worth a read.
Horst Wein
A well rounded sporting connoisseur, the Hanover born Saxon turned his hand to a variety of games that included rugby, football, ice hockey and basketball, however, he is better known for his work in field hockey. The former German international player moved into coaching and the FIH labelled him one of the world’s foremost experts in hockey and football development, before his death in 2016. The international governing body awarded Wein the first ever title of Master Coach, in 1975. Additionally, he worked for FC Barcelona, as well as the Spanish and German football federations and the International Olympic Committee. A pioneer of coaching techniques, he wrote a variety of books with a view on education and the sharing of ideas. In total he authored 36 pieces of sporting literature, including his well known piece, the Science of Hockey.