By Perry (Rocky) Crosswhite – Basketball Team Captain, 1980 Australian Olympic Games Team

A squad of players were chosen in mid-1979 with the object of selecting and preparing players for the Australian Olympic Basketball team to compete at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. These players commenced training and undertook a series of scheduled games against international teams both in Australia and in North America.

After an American tour in December 1979/January 1980 playing against a number of College/University teams the 1980 Team played matches in Australia against touring Club teams from Yugoslavia and also against a strong Mississippi State University team. These matches were played in most Australian capital cities.

Final selection of the players to make up the 1980 Team was finalised in April 1980. The team was made up of 12 players from three states, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. However as a result of the months of preparation playing together against overseas teams and despite being from three separate States, the players saw themselves as one entity when it came time to make the decision as to go and compete at the Games or not.

After the Australian Basketball Federation – (ABF) (at the time the controlling body for the sport of Basketball in Australia -now Basketball Australia) was approached by the Australian Government to boycott the 1980 Olympics the Head Coach, Lindsay Gaze, met with the 12 players and everyone agreed that we would make a team decision as to whether to go to the Games or not. It was unanimously agreed to go to the Games.
This decision was not surprising as the players had been preparing for the Games not only during the previous 12 months but also for many years through the various competitions and many hours of organised and personal individual training activities. Players did not think it was fair that they give up the opportunity to compete, representing Australia at the highest level of the sport they loved.

On 23rd May the Australian Olympic Federation voted to not boycott and compete at the 1980 Olympics. At the time this decision was publically announced, the Australian Olympic Basketball team was on a flight from Melbourne to Perth where we were to compete against an American University team. The pilot made an announcement to the passengers and to a person we cheered – we then knew we were going and that the hard work and sacrifice of the past months and years were not wasted.

Most of us thought that once the decision had been made that we were to compete we could get on with our preparation and concentrate on the Games. Unfortunately this was not the case and the pressure increased from the Government and a number of high profile persons in the public.

As was the case with a number of other Australian sports governing bodies the ABF was approached by the Federal Government Department responsible for Sport offering financial assistance to teams and athletes who decided to boycott. Although a number of team sports (including Hockey and Volleyball) and a number of individual athletes decided not to go to the Games there was never any doubt that the Basketball Team would go. When this became known publically a number of athletes and officials were publically and privately criticised, and a number told if they went to the Games they would lose their jobs.

It was made known by the Federal Government that any Federal Government employees who were proposing to go to the 1980 Olympic Games as team members would not be granted leave to attend. A number used recreation leave to attend.

At the time I was employed in the Victorian State Department of Youth, Sport and Recreation (YSR). The Federal Government had asked that all State Governments support the boycott of the 1980 Olympics and this meant that State Government employees should not be granted leave to attend the Games.

Fortunately the Minister for YSR, Brian Dixon (himself a former champion Australian Rules Football player) and the Director General of the YSR Department, Bert Keddie, were sympathetic to my situation and my absence during the Games was “ignored”.

As the days counted down until the Opening Ceremony for the Moscow Games on 19 July more and more pressure was being put on teams and athletes to boycott the Games. We were fortunate that as a team the pressure could be deflected across all of us however the Team Manager, Bob Staunton (who was also ABF Secretary-General) received most of the direct pressure from the Government and the public.

The original plan had the Basketball Team travelling by air on 12 July from Sydney to Moscow via London. The Team was to prepare in Melbourne fulltime from mid-June until departure, and accommodation in Melbourne had been arranged for the South Australians.

Around the second week in June Bob was receiving information that the Australian Government was considering the placing of a ban on athletes going to the Games. There were rumours that passports would be confiscated.

As such it was decided the 1980 Australian Olympic Basketball team would leave Australia early (end of June), so all team members would be overseas if such action was taken. Also it was thought that team members would be less exposed to the media, government and public pressure which was increasing regarding the decision not to boycott the Games.

A pre-games preparation program was hastily arranged with the team going firstly to Munich, Germany for a week of training and then to Yugoslavia for a series of Games against the Yugoslavian national team. This was the same team which would go on to win the Gold Medal in Moscow defeating the Soviet Union at their home games.

This decision, forced on the team to depart some three weeks earlier than originally planned, proved detrimental to the success of the team at the Games. In hindsight it would have been better to have stayed in Australia and prepared according to the original plan, using familiar facilities, and competing against a variety of strong local completion according to the specific requirements of the team.

In Munich the training venue was substandard and the local competition did not materialise. Being summer the local basketball competition was not running and most of the local players were on holidays. As well West Germany was boycotting the Games.

Then when we went to Split in Yugoslavia the team had to confront one of the best national teams in the world in a series of matches in different parts of the country. Although our team was internationally competitive we did not have the size or strength of the Yugoslavian players who had won the silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and, as mentioned above, would win the Gold in Moscow.

In these warm-up matches the Yugoslavian Team played strongly and seriously preparing for the Olympic tournament. We tried to do the same but found it difficult to match the size and strength of our opponents. We found it difficult to fine tune our structured offense which we felt would be successful against most of the other teams we would encounter at the Games, but was not as successful against the strong Yugoslavian team.

The result was that we lost some confidence in our capacity to win. As a result of these games some us “more mature” players became injured and had some over-use ailments in ankles and other joints. At the same time some of the younger players competing at their first Olympics were not as competitive as they thought they would be and lost confidence. Some were homesick having been away much longer than originally planned.

As such I believe the proposed boycott, and the pressures brought on by the threat of actions relating to the proposed boycott, had a detrimental effect on the performance of the 1980 Team in the Olympic tournament. It is generally accepted that the Team’s performance would have been improved had we been able to stick to the original preparation plan with more time in Australia for preparation.

Despite the above, in the Moscow Olympic tournament we were competitive and would have made the final round of the competition had a percentage difference between ourselves, Italy and Cuba favoured us. We did defeat Italy in the first round and their team went on to win the silver medal. Overall we finished 8th out of 12 in the tournament and won 4 games losing 3.

The personal effect on individual players was mixed. For those of us at the end of our international careers the boycott had a negative impact as we had hoped for more recognition of our representation of Australia by the public and the Government. For the younger players a number learned significantly from their experiences in the Olympic competition and went on to future success both domestically and internationally, and they received significant recognition.

One example where there was a lack of deserved recognition and applause was in the case of Ian Davies, a member of the 1980 Team. Ian was the not only the leading scorer for the Australian team, he scored more points than any other player among the 12 teams in the 1980 Olympic tournament. This outstanding achievement was hardly recognised by the Australian media and the public.

Unfortunately for many of the team members the Moscow Olympic Games was not the experience that we had expected, particularly when compared to experiences at previous (and future) Olympics by members of the Australian Olympic Team. We had to defend ourselves and our decisions at home, had to compete in isolation (little media coverage) at the Games, and then post games continue our lives as if the Games never took place. Despite all of the above we are proud we are members of the 1980 Australian Olympic Team.