CRAIG PEACOCK will be watching the Winter Olympics from his home in Glasgow in a couple of weeks time with something of a sense of longing. The GB internationalist, who plays his club ice hockey for Braehead Clan, is a regular in the GB team and he admits that he and his teammates are desperate to break the run that has seen GB fail to qualify for the Olympic Games for 70 years.

And with the team having come within a few games of qualifying for Sochi 2014 four years ago, the 29 year-old, who is originally from Peterborough, hopes that GB can stop the rot of failing to qualify sometime soon. “It definitely sucks sitting at home watching and especially with South Korea hosting – we beat them a few years ago so it does make you think well, if they’re there, we could be there too," he said. "

So if we can make it happen sometime in the future, that will be an amazing day for British hockey. It would be an absolute dream to get to the Olympics – I think that’s the goal of any athlete to make it there. Unfortunately for us, that’s still a bit away but if the game starts to develop more in the UK and more funding can come into it then hopefully you will see GB in the Olympics one day.”

Peacock is the only player on Breahead’s roster who is a GB team member but there are a couple of his fellow Clan players who have established themselves in junior GB teams. Both Jordan Buesa and Josh Grieveson have won caps for the junior national team and Peacock sees no reason why the pair cannot graduate to the senior team at some point in the future. “Jordan Buesa is still only 17 so he’s got a good few years yet and it’s really good for him to be getting experience at international level with the under-18 and under-20 teams," said Peacock. "He’s got great potential and has been getting some ice time this year which will be a huge benefit to him. He’s also practicing every day with professional players so that will help him improve a lot. And Josh has come on leaps and bounds recently too. If they both keep progressing as they are, I don’t see any reason why they both can’t make it into the senior team in the future.”

Braehead have been hit in recent weeks by a spate of injuries which is, admits Peacock, frustrating but he is confident that his team have what it takes to overcome the challenges they are facing, which is especially important when there’s so many all-Scottish clashes coming over the next few weeks, including a home game against Edinburgh on Saturday.

But as aggravating as this string of injuries to the team is, Peacock knows only too well that it’s just part of the sport. “It’s tough when you have injury issues but we’ve been together as a team for long enough that it doesn’t overly-matter because everybody can play with everybody," he said. "But it’s adversity like this that can bring a team together and that’s what happened to us in the past few weeks. Injuries are just part of the sport though - and I’ve had some pretty horrific ones. I had a bad one about five years ago when I got a skate in the face that needed 29 stitches. That’s probably the worst one I’ve had in terms of gruesomeness but I’ve had multiple broken bones, nose, hand, wrist, I’ve separated my shoulder, torn ligaments, I dislocated my chest this season – I didn’t now that was even possible until I did it. You have to just accept that if you become a hockey player, you’ll get injuries. When I’m old, my body will probably be in a total state but it’ll all have been worth it.”