The Adelaide doctor who played a pivotal role in the safe evacuation of a Thai soccer team trapped in a cave says giving the correct dose of drugs to the boys was the hardest part of the rescue.

“It was an estimate to start with and the first child was an experiment in a way,” Dr Richard Harris said on Tuesday after receiving the Star of Courage.

“It was a good guess with a lot of advice from a lot of other specialists. I was contacting specialists in Australia. I talked extensively with a variety of specialists in Thailand and took a lot of their advice on board.

“They were happy with the plan that we’d put forward but I’d never done it in the back of a cave on malnourished skinny Thai kids before.

“That for me was the most frightening part of the week.”