Martin Leach, a former national and state weightlifting representative, was appointed to the team for the Gold Coast games by the Australian Weightlifting Federation late last week.

It will be his sixth involvement with the Australian team at a Commonwealth Games.

Leach, the managing director of The Bendigo Cleaning Company, has more than 40 years experience in the sport.

As an athlete he competed at world, Commonwealth and Oceania championships level.

He was previously a national team coach for 10 years in the lead-up to the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Leach said he was excited to be part of what he believes will be a strong Australian team for the Gold Coast event.

"It's really nice to be involved again - last weekend I was in Tasmania for the national championships and got to see a lot of the young athletes that will form, this team," he said.

"I had seen their results on paper, but it was good to see them perform in person.

"I am really excited we have a group of young new coaches and really exciting athletes to work with."

Leach's first Commonwealth Games involvement came as an assistant coach in Auckland in 1990.

He was joint-head coach for the 1994 games in Canada and 1998 games in Malaysia, and section manager for the 2002 games.

In 2006, he was coach for athletes with a disabilities at the games in Melbourne.

The Gold Coast games will be staged next April.

Much of Leach's next 10 months will be spent travelling, participating in training camps and involvement at competitions, including the Oceania and Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships in September.

The final selection trials for the Commonwealth Games team will be in Sydney on December 17.

Leach rated the Australian team's prospects for the 2018 games as good.

"We are hoping to win up to up five medals across 16 athletes, although you never really know what is going to happen until the final entries arrive," he said.

"Some of the African nations are very surprising, every four years they come out with some wonderful results.

"The Canadians, the English and the Indians are historically strong and we expect that to be maintained, and Malaysia has been coming up with some impressive results since the last games.

"So we as a nation will certainly be under pressure, but we have  got a good squad from which the final team will be selected."

Leach has previously held the positions of Victorian Institute of Sport head coach, AWF executive director, AWF high performance manager and Victorian Weightlifting Association president.