It’s been 66 years since Australia last played Olympic ice hockey. Can we ever get back there?

For a sport that exists on the outermost margins of our national consciousness, it’s a long road back to the Winter Olympics. But there is a glimmer of hope. SportMilano Cortina 2026It’s been 66 years since Australia last played Olympic ice hockey. Can we ever get back there?By Vince Rugari February 20, 2026 — 3.30pmSaveLog in, register or subscribe to save articles for later.Save articles for laterAdd articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Got itNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeAdvertisementEvery Event. Every Medal in 4K.Watch live & on demand.Stream nowLivigno: If you’re an Australian who has suddenly fallen in love with the slick, occasionally violent spectacle that is ice hockey at these Winter Olympics, the first in 12 years to involve players from America’s National Hockey League, the thought has probably crossed your mind: why aren’t we there? We’re pretty good at field hockey. How much of a stretch could it be?Allow the bloke who runs the sport in Australia to let you down gently.“There’s a lot we can do to perform much better,” said Ice Hockey Australia president Tim Kitching of our men’s national side, ranked 34th in the world – not awful, relatively speaking, for a country with practically no ice.“But getting a men’s team to the Olympics is not a realistic goal at this stage.”It’s been 66 years since the last (and only) time an Australian ice hockey team made it to the Winter Olympics – back in an era when the sport was still loosely organised, fewer nations were involved, and there was no formal qualification system.They were our version of the Jamaican bobsled team: a group of 17 battlers, largely homegrown, save for a pair of naturalised Czechoslovakians who migrated after World War II and three born in Canada. Most were aged 30 or older. They trained together for one hour a week. One of them had never seen snow until they arrived for the 1960 Olympics in California’s Squaw Valley; goaltender Noel McLoughlin had never worn a face mask until a member of the gold medal-winning United States team gave him one.From left to right: Russell Jones, Noel McLoughlin, Basil Hansen, Noel Derrick, Ken Wellman and Rob Reidwere - members of the 1960 Australian Olympic ice hockey team, pictured in 2010.Credit: Paul RovereThey finished last, losing all six of their games, scoring 10 goals and conceding 87 against countries where ice hockey was (and remains) the national sport.The “Mighty Roos”, as they would become known, might have put up a better fight four years earlier, when those players were at their peak. They were even prepared to pay their own way to get to the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy.AdvertisementAll they needed was formal permission from the Australian Olympic Federation – but they never got a response.That tension – between enthusiasm and indifference, ambition and reality – sums up the history of ice hockey in Australia, a sport that exists on the outermost margins of our national consciousness, even though it shares plenty of traits with other codes we admire and obsess over.The obstacles to progress are, and always have been, financial, structural, cultural, and practically insurmountable.Or are they?If you ask Ryan Switzer, statistically the greatest coach in Australian ice hockey history, one of the many things holding the sport back is a dearth of creative thinking.The Mighty Roos’ ranking has hovered around the mid-30s for most of the time such rankings have been maintained – except for a brief purple patch in the early 1990s, when they rose to a high of 23rd, jumping 13 places in two years.A Canadian ex-professional who grew up playing junior hockey alongside future NHL great Mark Messier, Switzer moved to Australia in his late 30s and took on the job of coaching the national team precisely because of the enormity of the challenge.Former Australian coach Ryan Switzer with the NHL’s Stanley Cup in 2024. Credit: Ryan SwitzerSwitzer understood that trying to play “normal” hockey against full-time professionals was pointless, given Australia’s lack of quality and depth. They would get blown away, as they were early in his tenure, when he exposed them against the best-quality sides they could face.“I did four world championships. I always took my team over to Canada to play against exhibition teams – and we got our asses kicked. But that’s exactly what I wanted,” he said.So he came up with a different plan: instead of chasing the puck, his team deliberately gave it away.“We played a style that had never been played before in hockey,” Switzer said.Former Australian coach Ryan Switzer barks instructions from the sidelines.Credit: Ryan Switzer“Instead of trying to force and take the puck off them, which they are so good at and are used to it … we just got out of the way and said, ‘We know where you’re going, 20,000 people in this building know where you’re going, so off you go. You go down and take a shot on our goaltender and we’ll make sure that you can’t pass it to anybody else because we’ll cover them.’“If you’ve watched ice hockey, nobody does that. We spend all our lives passing it 30,