Great Britain Roster

1997

Asst Coach

World Championships, Pool B – 1997 in Poland.

Venues – Katowice and Sosnowiec.

Two words can best sum up the ’97 campaign to Poland – frustration and competitive.

The frustration was Great Britain’s sixth place finish in the eight team pool, which left them one place short of gaining entry to the 1998 Pool A qualifying tournament. The competitiveness of Peter Woods’ team was shown in them being well in six of the seven games, only the Belarussians proved to be clearly a better outfit.

Team spirit though was the over-riding factor in this campaign as the squad overcame a less than desirable location, and food not to their liking to again emerge with the national team status intact. Not surprisingly therefore that coach Peter Woods did not entertain dramatic changes. Asked about his selection policy, he mused, “The criticism is that you have to go with youth. No. I think you have got to go the best players. We weren’t blown out by any team and in three of the seven games, the opposing netminder was the number one star. I think our programme has made great strides over the last two years. We’ve only lost six of twenty-four games, and going into the game against the Swiss, we still had a shot at the bronze medal. Unfortunately (this time), things didn’t go our way, but I don’t think we have to make any drastic overall changes in our programme.”

Patrick Scott took the leading scorer honours with 4+3 from seven games with Paul Adey (5+1) and Steve Moria (4+2) just a point behind. 

Compiled by Anthony Beer, using material reported at the time in the Ice Hockey News Review.