Rudolf Potsch

* 1937

  • "All the guys from Kometa who played with me were great guys. We got different jobs. My teammate Honza Kasper was given the task of handing out state signs at the traffic inspectorate on Bratislavská Street here in Brno. He worked or was supposed to work there. It was an advantage when someone came there, we could choose a number. I had BN 10 10, for the reasons that there was an unwritten agreement in the police - at least in Brno, an unwritten agreement - that whoever had a ten in their number had such a better ratio in the investigation of an offence that you didn't get fined. Honza Kasper didn't go there much, he said, 'I'm a Gypsy, that wasn't an insult yet, now he's a Roma, I play hockey in the winter and Gypsies don't work in the summer.' I went to traffic accidents, but I didn't have any legal training or police school to be able to fine or direct someone. So I was a bystander or a helper everywhere. We worked from eight to twelve, then we went to training, and that was all we did. Then only one accident like that where I had to go with a colleague - the worst was reporting the death of a family member in, say, a motorcycle accident, that was twice. Those are such unpleasant things."

  • "I played as a playing coach for Ingstav, the head coach was Barton, my former teammate from Kometa. After a year, he told me that he got an offer to go to Italy. I stopped playing, started coaching and after two years we were promoted to the first league. After a long time there were two clubs playing in the first league. There used to be three years ago: Královopolská, Kometa and Zbrojovka. Now there were at least two for a long time. The performance of Kometa and Ingstav was different, we had a lot of supporters. If they didn't support Kometa, they came over to us, but it was still a minimum. You can say that a lot of artists were fans of ice hockey, for example in Kometa I talked about it. And Gusta Brom came to play for us at the first Ingstav game. He offered to welcome us and the spectators to the first league competition. So they unpacked their instruments in three rows, it was such a pearl with music and such a celebration."

  • "We old gents are talking about it, someone made up the story that I'm a master of the bodycheck. The hip or the shoulder, the hip is so much more effective than the shoulder, the player rolls over, falls down, whereas the shoulder is much harder, it's a direct hit. It's either a knockout or a rib break, knockout almost every time. I like it better, it shakes the opponent up more. Once we played in Pardubice, Špaček from Brno played for them, he's a good hockey player too. He was driving and I just knocked him down with my shoulder, the referees took it as a regular hit. He stayed there, I took the puck, the game went on, the referees didn't interrupt the game. On the other side, Pepek Cerny, a teammate, was coming in. He would have gone to the net himself, so I took the puck and flipped it over the lying Spacek to Cerny. And somehow Spacek woke up and I hit him in the head. His forehead was torn, blood started flowing, there was a scream, a roar from the crowd. They almost ate me. They took Spacek away to be treated, and then he came back and he had this towel, like a turban on his head, made so he wouldn't bleed. I made him a hero in Pardubice."

  • "I had another serious injury in Ljubljana at the World Championships. That was my last world championship where I got it again with the Soviet Union from Mr. Kuzkin. I knelt down to take a shot and he shot it from three metres straight into my face. So the yoke bone went inside my skull. So now what? Our doctor... They were gonna operate right away, they were gonna drill the bone in, cut it open and pull it back out. Our doctor said, 'No, you go to Brno, they'll fix you there.' So I drove all the way to Brno. Zdeněk Kepák, my teammate, was driving. It was quite a ride, I was on pills. Every shock had a terrible effect on the fracture. What they did here was that they cut my temple, inserted a lever through the temple seam into the cavity and pushed it out so that I wouldn't be Quasimodo, so that my face would be reasonably good. Except they had to, it was a local anaesthetic, they had to tie my hands and feet or I would have beat them."

  • "These are simply experiences that one will never forget. The last game was against Canada and we had to win, of course. At that time the team was not from the Red Star, we finished second behind Kladno. Kladno chose the team, coach Sýkora from Kladno was there, he also chose some players from Kometa. We can say that Kladno had a lot to do with it, Bacílek from Kladno played there, they invited Gregor. They chose players they trusted. I think it was a good team, they fought and the home environment helped a lot, the support of the spectators. With Canada it was actually a decisive game, we played three defenders because Franta Tikal and Bacílek were injured. So Karel Gut played, me and Honza Kasper. So Karel Gut played on the right side like I did, and I, as the youngest, had to play one substitution as the right defender and the second substitution with Karel Gut as the left defender and Honza Kasper as the right defender. That was, I think, the biggest physical strain I ever had in the national team. Then playing six defenders, it was cool. But three in one game like that, it was a lot. In that case, I was also successful shooting, I scored one goal against Canada. Then we won the puck, Karol Fako won the puck and I passed it to Mirek Vlach, who put it in the empty net."

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    Brno, 18.01.2024

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Only three defenders held out against Canada. He almost gave his all for the bronze

Rudolf Potsch in the national jersey in 1958
Rudolf Potsch in the national jersey in 1958
zdroj: archive of a witness

Rudolf Potsch was born on 15 June 1937 in Brno-Královo Pole. Dad Rudolf worked as a railwayman, mother Vlastislava took care of the household. Rudolf Potsch was an only child. He and his mother spent the end of the war hidden in the woods near Blansko. In 1948 he went with his mother to Prague to attend the funeral of President Edvard Beneš. He started playing hockey at the ice rink near Lužánky, which was completed in 1948. He played for the Workers‘ Reserve team and trained as a turner. In the youth he was led by coach Antonín Haukvic. He played defence and in 1956 he enlisted from Královo Pole to join Red Star Brno, known as Kometa. He won the national championship nine times. He scored 133 goals in 354 games for the Kometa, the most of any defenders who ever played for Brno. After a facial injury, he retired from the national team in 1966. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, he spent three years in the West German top flight. He won two championships with Düsseldorf. He received offers to emigrate but never considered it. With the Czechoslovak national team he participated in seven World Championships and two Olympic Games. In 1961, he won the title of European champion and vice-world champion at the championships in Switzerland. He also won world silver in Finland 1965 and Slovenia 1966. At the Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, he finished third with the national team, and won bronze medals at the World Championships in Prague 1959 and Stockholm 1963. After his playing career, he coached Ingstav Brno, with whom he was promoted to the first league, Zetor Brno, Olomouc and the Slovak Dukla Trenčín, where he won the championship title. In 1959 he married for the first time and in 1961 his son was born. He later divorced and raised another son with his second wife. In 2024 he lived with his wife Gabriela in Brno.