Abbott was born on 10 January 1986 in Darwin, Northern Territory, and is an Australian aboriginal.[1][2][3] His first name is Desmond but he is called Des.[4][5] One of his hobbies is playing Australia rules football.[1] He works for a water corporation.[2] His uncle is Joe Daby, one of the best ever Northern Territory field hockey players.[6] He is recognized in the Australian Olympic Committee list of Australian Indigenous Olympians.[7]
Field hockey
Abbott plays midfield and striker.[1][2] When playing for the national team, he wears guernsey 32.[2] He plays club hockey for the Aquinas Reds. He plays for the NT Stingers in the Australian Hockey League, where he wears shirt number 17.[2] He played in a June 2010 game for the NT Stingers against the Western Australia that Western Australia won 4–1. He scored a goal in the game.[8] In January 2005, he was a member of Australia's U21 national team and played in a five-game test series against Malaysia in Brisbane. He was one of four Darwin, Northern Territory based players on the squad.[9] In June 2005, he was one of five Northern Territory players to represent Australia on the U21 team at the World Cup.[9] In 2009, he played professional hockey in the Netherlands.[10]
National team
Abbott had his first cap for the senior side on 28 January 2007.[1][2] during the Dutch Series in Canberra.[11] In January 2008, he was a member of the senior national team that competed at the Five Nations men's hockey tournament in South Africa.[12] He won the Hockey Champions Trophy in 2008, 2009 and 2010.[2][13] He was a member of the 2009 Champions Trophy winning team, playing in the gold medal match against Germany that Australia won by a score of 5–3.[14] He was a member of the Australian side that took home gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the 2010 World Cup.[2]
Abbott competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics where he won a bronze medal.[1][2][15] In Australia's first game at the 2008 Games, he scored three goals in the game against Canada.[4] He was the first Aboriginal to represent Australia at the Games in men's field hockey.[5] He scored a goal in the bronze medal game against the Netherlands in the country's 6–1 victory.[16] New national team coach Ric Charlesworth named him, a returning member, alongside fourteen total new players who had few than 10 national team caps to the squad before in April 2009 in a bid to ready the team for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.[17] He did not compete at the Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia in May 2011 because he was injured.[18] In December 2011, he was named as one of twenty-eight players to be on the 2012 Summer OlympicsAustralian men's national training squad.[15][19][20] This squad will be narrowed in June 2012. He trained with the team from 18 January to mid-March in Perth, Western Australia.[3][19][21] He was one of two players from the Northern Territory named to the squad.[3] In February during the training camp, he played in a four nations test series with the teams being the Kookaburras, Australia A Squad, the Netherlands and Argentina.[22] He missed part of the training camp because of a strained quad.[15]
Recognition
In 2009, he was nominated for the Qantas NT Sportsperson of the Year.[4] He was nominated as the International Hockey Federation 2008 Young Men's Player of the Year, where he finished second.[4]
References
^ abcde"AIS Hockey — Des Abbott". Bruce, Australian Capital Territory: Australian Institute of Sport. Archived from the original on 23 March 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
