Hi there,

As this is my first blog, I thought I would start by setting the scene a little. 
I am part of the Great Britain men’s squad, which is currently preparing for the biggest tournament of our lives, the Olympic Qualifier in Santiago, Chile in March 2008.

We have a squad of 24 players (18 English men and 6 Scots), which will be whittled down to 18 players come the qualifier in March.  It is my opinion that we have actually drawn the best Qualifying group possible with Bangladesh (28), Austria (25), Chile (20), Egypt (18) and India (8) in our group.  The numbers after each team are their world ranking and currently Great Britain is ranked 9th in the World, and 2nd in our group.  The one problem is that there is only one team that can qualify from the tournament, which means we have to beat the eight-time Olympic Champions India, in order to qualify for Beijing.

So why am I pleased with the group?  For one, India, although very talented, are not dominating world hockey as they used to, and although they are ranked above us there is very little between the teams.  We have a talented, well organised, team with a strong ethos of hard work, and with competition for places meaning that training should be high intensity during our preparation, we have to be extremely positive.

Our programme and squad training started in Holland last week, and I left home at 4:30am last Sunday in order to fly to Amsterdam via Heathrow.  Fitness testing commenced at 9pm Sunday evening and although a little tired I felt I performed well.  We trained twice daily Mon- Wed and played Holland on Tuesday night, which resulted in a disappointing 3-1 defeat.  We performed well in spells, but made too many basic errors.  However, the camp was very positive and all players were kept amused by our new fitness coach Andy Hudson, Strength &Conditioning’s answer to David Brent!!

The Holland game was also a mile-stone for Scottish hockey with all six Scottish players playing in the game, which must be some sort of record.  Four Scots players gained their first GB cap and Stephen Dick scored our only goal of the game!!

For the next two weeks we are training at our adopted home Bisham Abbey (outside London) from Wed-Sat in preparation for our next tournament, the Champions Trophy, in Malaysia at the end of November.  Selection (of 20 players) is on Nov 11th so there is no time for a dip in form or any injuries.

Graham

Graham is supported by the Scottish Institute of Sport.  To view his profile, click here.