Hockey: Anna Lawrence ready for 'normal' life

By TERRY MADDAFORD

Being summoned for a drug test after playing the key role in the Auckland women's national league triumph was a quirky way for the curtain to come down on Anna Lawrence's long and memorable career.

Minutes after Auckland's 4-1 win over her former Canterbury team-mates in the Lion Foundation league final at Auckland Grammar School on Saturday, 29-year-old Lawrence stunned the crowd by announcing her retirement.

While she has played her last international, Lawrence was not quite so certain about her future at club and representative level, although the feeling was the K Cup triumph might be it.

In a poignant scene after the crowd had drifted away, and as Lawrence waited to undergo her drug test, she was joined arm-in-arm on the pitch by long-time team-mate Mandy Smith.

While Lawrence's decision will be a body blow to New Zealand's hectic international programme next year, the increasing possibility that Smith might follow her into retirement would rob coach Jan Borren of two of the best players from the past decade.

Smith, who missed the entire league through injury, is due to have further tests on her troublesome hamstring and back this week and expects to make a decision after that.

Smith followed Lawrence, who played the first of her 164 games for New Zealand as an 18-year-old against Japan in Dunedin in 1990, into the national side within six months.

Lawrence, regarded among the best in the world, rates her bronze medal at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games as the highlight in a career which took her around the world.

"It was great to get something tangible like a medal," said Lawrence who, as captain for five years, played a key role in lifting the profile of New Zealand women's hockey and their world ranking from 23rd (in 1995) to the top six.

Now she is looking forward to some time to herself and giving the same commitment to her marketing role with the new Millennium Institute of Sport and Health on Auckland's North Shore.

"It will be great on Monday morning to have a leisurely breakfast, read the paper and roll into work," Lawrence said.

"She set such a standard," Jaimee Provan, her former Canterbury, New Zealand and, more recently, Auckland team mate said.

"Anna was always looking to do better. I know of no other player who was as dedicated or who worked as hard both in training and on the field."

Lawrence said her decision to quit had been influenced to some extent by next year's busy schedule.

The women will play the Champions Trophy (for the top six nations) in China in May, the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in July-August and the World Cup in Perth (November-December).

"I need a change of focus," she said after her emotional farewell. "I'm looking forward to a normal life. I'm the sort of person who likes to give 100 per cent in everything I do. It is hard to do that for your hockey after putting in 50 or 60 hours a week at work."

Borren paid his own tribute.

"Anna has been a wonderful role model for young women in New Zealand; in fact for all sports people - male, female, old and young. She has demonstrated everything that is good about sport."