Great Britain Roster

1999

Asst Coach

World Championships, Pool B – 1999 in Denmark.

Venues – Odense and Rodovre.

Great Britain’s best World Championship performance since the ’93 spectacular in Eindhoven.

Only the point ‘dropped’ in the final game against the hosts, Denmark, prevented Great Britain from securing automatic promotion, however, the silver medal display in the eight team pool earned entry into the Pool A qualification tournament.

The pick of the results was arguably the win over Kazakhstan, not only because they had been labelled as the most talented team in Denmark, but also because the result demonstrated Great Britain’s growing comfort at this level and their increasing ability to adapt to the requirements of high class international ice hockey.

The disappointment over missing out on a gold medal by so narrow a margin nonetheless gave way to a realistic appreciation of what had been achieved. National team coach Peter Woods commented, “Over the past few years we have played well, but in tournaments you have not only got to win games, but win the right games. You need a number of things to be successful… fortunately, this time around things seemed to go in our direction. Getting some early results helped us plus we had a very solid team, arguably the best we have had as in the total package, and although we had already achieved a medal going into the final game, you always want more so I guess at the time there was some bitterness and disappointment. However, looking back to before the tournament, had anyone said, ‘here, take a silver medal and go home’ I guess everyone would have accepted that.”

Graham Garden top scored for Great Britain with 2+5 from the seven games played whilst Jeff Johnstone and Paul Adey were just a point behind. Johnstone was the top goalscorer with 4+2, Adey splitting his six points, 3+3.

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

Asst Coach