Midweek Musings GB Special...

Whisper it, but maybe all the hard work done behind the scenes of the GB system is starting to bear fruit. Despite missing Jonny Weaver, Dave Longstaff, and Paul Dixon (i.e three of the major experienced heads on a young team) the GB squad nicked a win against Lithuania yesterday by five goals to three. The Lithuanians had a few names familiar to British hockey fans, including Edinburgh's Dino Bauba, ex-Edinburgh and now MK Lightning Mindaugas Kieras, and ex-Solihull King Sarunas Kuliesius, as well as Romford's "Bomber" Andrius Kaminskas. GB goals came from Greg Chambers, Jason Hewitt, Dave Clarke, Colin Shields and Ashley Tait...five different scorers is not bad for a team supposedly lacking a true offensive punch...

Let's not get carried away here-Lithuania and tonight's opponents Norway, while no slouches, are not the best teams in Europe (as can perhaps be seen by the fact that they only have one player who's been judged good enough to play EIHL level in Britain thus far-with the exception of Dino Bauba they've only reached BNL level at the most). Norway will provide a tougher test with France perhaps being the strongest in the group. However, they are all teams who have been significantly more active in European hockey circles up until now, and are all teams GB have to become better than in order to make some serious noise on the international scene...winning the Mont Blanc Invitational may raise a few eyebrows amongst those who are unaware that the British Isles have a hockey pedigree of sorts.

What is encouraging, and will be even more so should GB actually go on and win the thing, is that this is a squad missing several of its acknowledged best-it will give hope that the much-maligned depth of British talent is stronger than detractors of the national team realise.

Ideally, this tournament can be used as a stepping stone to participation in events like the SKODA-Cup, facing teams like Germany and Switzerland. The French roster will already be doing so next week after the Mont Blanc event-for British hockey to truly progress this team must follow their cross-Channel neighbours and test themselves against the best in Europe sooner rather than later, rather than perennially playing pool B nations, which will kill any momentum gained from any success in southern France this week.

Of course, there are still two games to play, so we shall see what occurs, but at least a positive start is finally being made to drag British hockey up by the bootstraps...

And that's the musings over for today...keep keeping your eye on the puck...