This often brought her into close touch with the players and she heard about the problems they experienced with their clubs. As the game boomed in the late 1980s with sponsorship, TV and a couple of dozen new rinks, teams became more professional and a players’ union was talked about more and more. One was set up but never survived  Jo found her opportunity when Britain’s national senior team won promotion to the elite pool of the World Championships in March 1993. The following September, with GB taking part in an Olympic qualifying tournament at Sheffield Arena, Jo called a meeting of interested players and the Ice Hockey Players Association (GB) came into being.

During the next 13 years Jo somehow managed to keep the organisation together through the biggest upheaval the sport had seen since the post World War 2 era. The clubs in the all-professional Superleague spent around £1 million a season on their wage-rolls in the league’s early stages, an amount previously unheard of.

Originally helped by several players, led by GB captain Ian Cooper, Jo was eventually left to run the organisation virtually single-handed. When she eventually had to give up her part-time legal secretary’s job to run the IHPA, she had the support of her equally hockey-mad husband, Andy.

The IHPA’s task was to inform the players about their rights regarding contracts, work permits, insurance, taxes, wages, health and safety and so on. Jo travelled round the country at the start of each season to meet as many of the new imports as she could and explain all these – to the players – rather tedious matters.

With the sport rarely able to bring itself to recognise let alone co-operate with the players’ association, running the association was often stressful work. Many were the times that Jo butted heads with the leagues and the governing bodies.