Carol Owens and Rachel Grainger Boycott Australian Team

10.10.00 Birmingham, SquashTalk News by M Bronstein

[also: complete day one men's qualifying, women's qualifying]

Exclusive to Squashtalk. October 10 2000
AUSTRALIAN WOMEN BOYCOTT WORLD TEAMS
Australian squash has received another damaging body blow with the news that both Carol Owens and Rachel Grinham , ranked three and 11 respectively, have refused to play for the Australian women's team in the world team championships in Sheffield in November.

Owens, who now lives in New Zealand, denied that her decision has anything to do with wanting to play for New Zealand and told me that her refusal is based on the attitudes of Squash Australia and the Australian Institute of Sport.

"They do not give me one penny of support and they don't pay me to play for the team. I pay Paul Wright [the English coach who now lives in New Zealand] good money to make the best I can be and Squash Australia, who are always pleading poverty, think they can just use me when they want. That they don't have the money is not my problem; let them go out and get sponsors rather than relying on government aid," she told me in Birmingham as she prepared for her first round match against Egypt's Salma Shabana.

But it isn't all about money. Owens is most unhappy with the appointment of Robyn Cooper as the Australian women's manager and coach after rejecting Liz Irving. "Robyn doesn't have any experience at international level. She's never played at a world championship. And when she was appointed she never bothered to contact the players. I don't like the way they take us for granted. They wrote to me and said they assumed I would be playing for them and I wrote back and told them they had assumed wrong. I told them I didn't like their attitude to the team and their attitude to me," Owens said.

In desperation Squash Australia got in touch with Liz Irving asking her to play. She also turned them down, telling they she had just been appointed coach of the Dutch women's team. Irving, ranked 21 in the world, lives and coaches in Amsterdam and is also an outspoken critic of the AIS.

She agrees with Owen who claims that: "The Institute only ever cared about Michelle Martin and Sarah Fitz-Gerald and forgot about the rest of us. Now Michelle's gone and Sarah is injured, they suddenly remembered us." Irving is bitter about the way she was neglected when recovering from a shoulder operation. "I was at the institute trying to get the arm going again, and they wouldn't even feed me balls. Rodney Martin, Geoff Hunt and another coach were all on the court with Michelle."

Australia will have to go to Sheffield with Fitz-Gerald, ranked 10, Natalie Grinham, ranked 24 and Laura Keating, ranked 50, giving England , who have six players in the world top ten, virtually a free run at the title.

• Golestan Radwan: Egypt
• Tomas Barva, Czech Republic
• David Blick, Alaska USA
• Kim Tunney: Midwest USA
• Andre Maur: Atlanta USA
• Paul Ansdell: Massachusetts USA
  

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