Postcards From Camp #3

📍 The Early Hours

August, 2026

The early hours can be a dangerous time.

It’s a breeding ground for irrational thoughts, ifs, buts and maybes. 

It’s about 2.45am and I’ve just finished replaying a scenario that I had already run through hundreds of times in the hours previously. We’re a few hours removed from being knocked out of the World Cup at the Quarter-Final stage and my mind has been working overtime since the full time whistle.

It’s serving no purpose. The bounce, the whistle or the positioning won’t change, no matter how many times I will it to. 

Tournaments like this can become all-consuming. The magnitude of the event takes precedent over everything else and the constant focus of one game to the next can create a bubble that’s difficult to convey to people who haven’t actually experienced it themselves. 

It can sensationalise a game, a result or a moment into something that can take every possible ounce of energy to compartmentalise and process.

Here in Amsterdam, we’re lucky enough to have some great opportunities to switch off (primarily in coffee shops) but the mind always circles back to the primary reason we’re here. As the tournament progresses, the games intensify in terms of quality, pace and scrutiny.

The magnitude of a result becomes more important with every 60 minutes played and then, when everything reaches a fever pitch, it’s done.

You’re cast aside in terms of the tournament, no longer important enough to continue, and everything you’ve worked so hard for is lost for at least another 4 years.

You question whether you’re good enough to take that step and whether it’s all worth it if this is the feeling you’re working towards.

There’s nothing really that works for overcoming something like this except time. I’ve faced a decent bit of adversity in my career; both personal and collective so feel somewhat qualified to take that position. The immediate frustration and anger needs time to settle before we can begin to accept what has happened and move on.

Despite this, I, like many of the guys here, don’t have time. It was meant to be now. It’s a finite window at this level and I’m not the only one of our group to have more years behind me than ahead.

For what it’s worth, the most valuable thing I’ve ever been told within sport is that, if you’re not careful, your talent will take you places that your mind can’t keep you. It’s been a cornerstone of my career to date and something that will keep this group perennially hammering on the door until we kick it through.

At the top level, you’re entitled to nothing. Whether we like it or not, that’s exactly where we’ll be starting from when we come together as GB in September to begin training again. 

We know and feel the disappointment that we’ve caused people in this tournament. We know the expectations that people had and believe me when I say we had them of ourselves. But sport just isn’t like that. It doesn’t care about any of your expectations, how much you want it or how much you’ve trained and prepared for the moment. 

We believe we have a special group that can deliver. You have to believe it if you want to succeed at this level. But belief doesn’t count for much at a time like this. 

We’re no worse a team than when we started this competition. We delivered a performance that was below our level at a crucial time and it cost us a chance at the medals. The hard truth is that it should have done. That’s what elite sport and tournament hockey should be. Sure, other teams have lost games by the same margin and gone through, but they didn’t lose that game, at that time, in that manner.

There’s a danger to overreact in the aftermath of something like this. There are pragmatic reasons why we lost that Argentina game however sensationalising intangibles isn’t conducive to anything helpful.

There’s a bond within this group that really is special. It’s a cliché used all too much by losing teams and at risk of regurgitating the stereotypical ‘we’ll be back’ statement that accompanies every losing team, I really believe we will.

If you’ve read some previous posts then you’ll understand just why that is.

The quiet stillness of the early hours can indeed be a dangerous time but those thoughts and emotions need to be properly explored in order to be put to bed.

This one will just take a lot longer than it will for me to do the same.

Only then can the push for that next step truly begin.