Proud coach Barry Dancer has lauded the "gutsiness" of his young Kookaburras to upset Spain in South Africa in one of the most stirring hockey triumphs of his national tenure.

Dancer was overjoyed with Australia's thrilling 3-2 Five-Nations final win in sapping heat in Potchefstroom to leave him with a massive Olympic selection headache.

The long-time coach left 10 senior players with more than 1100 international caps behind in Australia to build depth in his squad leading into their gold medal defence in Beijing in August.

"This is a very valuable result moving forward," Dancer told AAP.

"Our expectations with the group weren't as high as the result."

Top-placed Spain went into the final as hot favourites and had the advantage of two days rest when Australia were forced to back-up a day after sneaking into the play-off with a 9-0 thrashing of South Africa.

The underdogs grabbed an unlikely 2-0 lead late in the first half after goals by Luke Doerner and Andrew Smith but the Spaniards, playing at full-strength, charged back and tied the scores with 11 minutes left.

The Kookaburras defence, led by man-of-the-match and goalkeeper Nathan Burgers, repelled wave after wave of attack before Grant Schubert scored a brilliant individual goal on counter-attack at the death.

Dancer, who took over from Terry Walsh in 2001, hailed the performance as one of the bravest he'd seen.

"I think the gutsiness of yesterday's performance and courage, particularly in the second half, to keep going when physically we were on our knees compared to our opposition and etch out a win after they came back, it was most courageous," he said.

"I would think we were on empty.

"We were at a stand-still basically from midway through the second half and we needed some real courage to come through the last 15 minutes, which they did.

"There was a lot of pride in what they achieved yesterday."

The victory breaks the Olympic champions' run of big-time final losses after falling to Germany in the 2006 World Cup decider (4-3) and last year's Champions Trophy final (1-0).

Despite the win, Dancer said Australia would still start level with the Germans, Spain, Holland and Korea going into the 2008 Games.

The national selectors are now considering adding more players to the pre-selected 14-strong training squad which has already been extended by one due to the impressive form of Doerner.

Dancer conceded the Five-Nations campaign had muddied the waters with several of his rested senior players not guaranteed tickets to Beijing.

"A good number of those are not assured of a place now, there's no doubt about that," he said.

"It will certainly make the competition a lot tighter for the experienced players.

"To see the young guys develop and mature and a lot of growth in the individual and the team ... in doing that we certainly have broadened the genuine depth of the squad."

Experienced midfielder and co-captain Rob Hammond was named man-of-the-series.

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