Tuesday Thoughts: International Special

As promised yesterday, this time out we look at Great Britain's opponents in the forthcoming World Championships, as they stand in the way of GB's attempts to be promoted back to the elite level of international competition and indeed take part in the next Winter Olympics. Despite not being among the top 16 nations in the world (they're all competing at the World Championships proper) there are some good teams in the group, and we start with perhaps the best of them...

Austria: The host nation has long lived in the shadow of its neighbour Germany as far as international competition goes, although they were the team relegated from the top sixteen at the last world championships and thus will be looking for a quick return. The Erste Bank Superliga is one of the better in Europe, and there are several Austrians with NHL experience, including Buffalo's exciting sniper Thomas Vanek, ex NY-Ranger Thomas Pock and ex-St Louis Blue Reinhard Divis. However, only Vanek is currently on the roster, along with ex-Minnesota Wild player Christoph Brandner. The Austrians are by far the favourites to win the group, particularly now Darcy Werenka has accepted dual nationality in order to play internationally for them rather than his native Canada, and with home advantage it's hard to look past them returning to the elite sixteen this time round...

Poland: This time out the Poles are made up entirely of players who play either in their domestic league or, in a few cases, other Eastern European leagues. They'll be GB's first opponents in Innsbruck, and they're a team about whom very little is known outside their native country, so it will be interesting to see just what level they're at compared to GB-as a team who stayed in Div I last time out and have played at this level since 2002, they should be fairly comparable...

Kazakhstan: Now we're right out in the unknown. As a former Soviet satellite state, the Kazakhstanis are a team who haven't really stood out in international competition, although they are the lone team in this group to have played in the 2006 Olympics, finishing in 9th place. Made up of players from the Russian leagues, they should be of a decent standard-however, a solid mid-table finish (or second at best) is probably all they can hope for...

Netherlands: There was a time when, like GB, the Dutch side had a large amount of dual-nationals. Now, they're almost entirely made up of players from the domestic league, with one dual-national in Paul Stanfort. The high point of Dutch hockey history was their participation in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid-since then they've not really made any waves on the International scene, although they too have consistently played at Div 1 level for a number of years...

South Korea: The new boys in the group after winning promotion from Div II last year, the Asian team are a long way from home and possibly some way out of their depth, despite the surprisingly high standard of the Asian leagues. They're the lowest-ranked team in the group, although they do hold the record for the highest-ever ice-hockey score after beating Thailand 92-0 (that's a goal every 45 seconds) in 1998 at the Asian Winter Games.

That's your somewhat brief preview of the opponents who GB will be facing from Sunday-for an analysis of the GB team click here, although it has changed slightly with Danny Meyers being brought in to replace the withdrawing Nathan Rempel, Shane Johnson not being cleared to take part in time (replaced by Luke Boothroyd) and Colin Shields taking an injury on Saturday (replaced by Warren Tait.

Tomorrow we run our usual Midweek Musings and start to look forward to the EPL finals taking place in Coventry this weekend...

Keep keeping your eye on the puck...