Award of Merit - John Sanders

John Sanders can be credited for much of Australian hockey’s historical data and the creation of accurate historical records, especially of all Australian women’s and men’s international matches going back to the early 1900’s.

Equipped with the necessary skills required, John has worked on this enormous project together with current Chair of the Hall of Fame Committee, Richard Aggiss since 2008. No one from Hockey Australia commissioned John to undertake this task – it was purely voluntary and a labour of love.

In the beginning it was researching every newspaper in libraries and through the Trove, old Hockey Circles, and contacting friends in hockey across Australia and Richard’s network of friends across the world in the search for results and goal scorers. 

John established the system of keeping the records and over the 11 years this system has been modified and updated to include the extra data that has come to light. This research included hundreds of hours in the WA State Library and on Trove, looking through old newspaper articles from across Australia, often getting snippets of information at a time. This type of research requires persistence and dedication over many years.

These records, which have been available on the Hockey Australia webpage, include match results and goal scorers, player names including married name where known and an official HA player number is allocated to each Australian player. As most of the official records from AHA and AWHA have been destroyed or lost over the years much of this detail of who played in each match is still unknown.

John in his own quirky way has sourced much information by speaking with Hockeyroos and Kookaburra players and sometimes their parents who have all contributed information from family scrap books or anecdotal evidence of who played and when. John is often referred to as “the Historian”. He has established his own Hockey History page on the internet and regularly reports on interesting facets of the Australian teams backed up with statistical data.

In recent years Hockey Australia have often asked John to prepare detailed information on a player’s hockey career, especially for milestone matches or obituaries for past Olympians or champions of our sport. When Jamie Dwyer retired in 2016, ending his illustrious career, John was able to provide all the detail and information on Jamie’s career, much of it used by news outlets across Australia and in this instance across the hockey world. This would not have been possible without John’s work over the past 11 years.

John has been co-opted onto the Hockey Australia Hall of Champions committee with the purpose of providing the committee with details on players being considered for Induction into the Hall of Fame. He is then asked to write biographies that provide the details of a player’s career that support the recommendations to the HA Board. This service is invaluable and John’s work has provided detail on players that until the hockey history project was either unknown or sketchy at best. It is now also common to hear TV commentators and hockey experts using statistical information sourced from the Australian Hockey Records.

John's Award of Merit was ratified in 2019.

What he said…
“I am thrilled to receive this honour! I enjoyed being part of the Hockey Australia History Project.” John Sanders

From those in the know…
“John Sanders’ contribution to hockey cannot be denied and his legacy of years of work will live on long after he has passed on.” Richard Aggiss (Chair, Hockey Australia Awards Committee)