Hockeyroos part ways with coach Katrina Powell in bombshell move on road to 2028 LA Olympics

CODE Sports can exclusively reveal Powell has immediately resigned from the national program she took to two Olympics.

The 53-year-old spent the past four years successfully rebuilding the program in the wake of damning 2020 revelations of a toxic culture.

The Olympic legend fronted the playing group and staff on Wednesday morning to deliver the news with Hockey Australia officials.

Powell said the time was right for her to step down now to allow the next head coach to select the 2026 high performance squad.

“It’s been an honour to Coach the Hockeyroos for the last four-and-a-half years and I’m proud to have taken the group forward. With the 2026 squad selection process about to commence I felt it was the right time to step down and clear the path for the next Head Coach of the Hockeyroos,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.

On the surface, it appears an astounding turn of events, given Powell’s Hockeyroos could be considered unlucky in back-to-back Olympic quarter-final exits after they dominated group play in both Tokyo and Paris.

But the stunning news comes in the wake of a lacklustre performance at the recent Oceania Cup in Darwin, where the Hockeyroos missed an opportunity for direct qualification to the 2026 World Cup and dipped to an unheard of seventh in the FIH world rankings.

It’s understood the 2-1 Oceania series defeat at the hands of a New Zealand team that, on paper and statistically, was vastly inferior, set off alarm bells at Australian hockey HQ.

The slide down the world rankings and big-game failures raised fears the Hockeyroos’ development was lagging behind in pursuit of the ultimate goal of an Olympic podium finish in 2028.

Ranked second in the world in 2023, the Hockeyroos slumped to fifth in 2024, marking the lowest an Australian national women’s hockey team had finished a calendar year in over a decade – it was sixth in 2012.

HA chief executive David Pryles thanked Powell for her dedication and service.

“On behalf of the Hockey Australia Board, management, staff, and players, I would like to sincerely thank Katrina for her commitment and contribution,” Pryles said.

“She stepped into the role during a turbulent time and played a key role in stabilising and rebuilding the Hockeyroos culture.”

It’s been 25 years since the Hockeyroos won an Olympic medal. Ironically, Powell, who has scored the second most international goals for Australia (141) behind fellow legend Alyson Annan (166), was part of that gold medal home triumph in Sydney 2000.

HA powerbrokers have set lofty goals for the next three years in a ruthless pursuit to put the women’s national team back at the pinnacle of the sport.

A source said there was a feeling the time was right for change and a new coach would have enough lead-up to become acclimatised and prepare for next year’s Pro League and World Cup qualifiers on the road to the 2026 tournament in Belgium and, ultimately, the 2028 Olympics.

A triple-Olympian and dual-gold medallist in Atlanta and Sydney, Powell stands among the greats of the sport.

In 2021, she took the coaching reins of a broken program in the wake of a damning review that revealed a toxic culture within the Hockeyroos.

Under Powell’s interim stewardship, the women’s national team made it to the Olympic quarter-finals in Tokyo, where they suffered a shock 1-0 loss to India.

Later that year, Powell was appointed as the first female coach of the women’s national team in over four decades (Colleen Quinn, 1978).

Tasked with ensuring all recommendations from HA’s review into the culture and leadership of the Hockeyroos were implemented, Powell was lauded for her calming influence, integrity and excellence – in the face of savage funding cuts in the wake of a poor finish at the Tokyo Olympics.

Success came quickly under the woman affectionately know as ‘Triny’ with World Cup bronze and Commonwealth Games silver in 2022. Bronze in the 2023-24 FIH Pro League had hopes high for Paris.

The Canberra-born mentor was forced to weather a storm after striker Rosie Malone went public with allegations of selection bias when she was left off that team – and complaints the tough-as-nails coach didn’t give her high-fives.

The Hockeyroos unified behind Powell in the wake of Malone’s accusations but, after sweeping through the group stage undefeated in Paris, they were again brought undone in the quarters, this time by China – aided by a questionable umpiring decision that left Hockey Australia seething.

There’s more irony in the fact Annan was the architect of the Hockeyroos undoing as coach of China.

HA, in September last year, deemed those efforts good enough to extend Powell’s tenure past LA 2028.

That won’t happen, now, with current assistant Rhett Halkett immediately installed on an interim basis as the recruiting process for a new head coach of the Hockeyroos begins.

KATRINA POWELL

5 x Olympian (3 as a player, 2 as coach)

2 x Olympic gold (Atlanta, 1996, Sydney, 2000)

1 x World Cup gold (Utrecht, 1998)

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1 x Commonwealth Games gold (Kuala Lumpur, 1998), 1 x bronze (Manchester, 2002)

International caps: 252

International goals: 141 (second-most by an Australian)