Namely a lack of rinks. They don't need to be huge just enough to accommodate 1-2000 people. Get more kids skating there and see who has talent for the sport. Bring in the right coaches as currently the coaching standards in GB are low and juniors will suffer as a result. That requires money and somehow IHUK needs to get that funding going with the help of GB Sport and the private sector. And a return of rinks in areas where there was a traditional hockey presence like Durham, Streatham and Wembley. At a certain age 13-14 get the best kids scholarships to go abroad to play and study or set up more schemes like the Okanagan Academy within the UK. And a restoration of the second tier of British hockey which currently is in a worryingly poor state. Not to mention a limit on imports which unfortunately has been increased. It is all well and good having skilled imports from which juniors can learn but as in football please don't import journeymen for the sake of it instead of giving the spot to a young British player who has talent and ability.
Unfortunately most of this won't happen. Ice hockey is stuck in the perpetual cycle of not being able to get funding because they don't meet the participation targets of organisations like Sport England, which is impossible to do so due to the number of rinks and ice time available, but we won't get any more rinks because they won't give us funding, so it's a never ending cycle. Another sad reality is, and it's sounds horrible to say, but a lot of the time they're only interested in increasing participation for underrepresented groups such as women and the disabled. I remember a few years ago there was a guy in the British ice hockey community involved in sports governance somehow, going round saying in order to get funding clubs had to show it was for people aged 16-25 and everyone who knows anything told him sorry but to actually improve the sport you've got to target children at a much earlier age, but 16-25 was their box-ticking age range.
That's the participation problem, the other problem is they'll only give funding at the elite level if there's a realistic chance of a medal, unfortunately ice hockey is a team sport that other countries actually care about. It's much easier to chuck money at an obscure individual sport with very low participation, you can just get somebody who is a naturally good athlete and teach them how to ride a bit of metal down a slide for no other reason than it will look good on the medals table and for some arbitrary jingoistic reasons, the tangible benefits are extremely minimual. I think it's sad that they waste so much money on this rubbish when if used on ice hockey it would actually benefit the tens of thousands of people who play and watch every week, rather than just a few elite athletes. I don't think there is even a skeleton track in this country, but we win Olympic medals in it because they pinpointed it as an easy one to achieve and threw loads of money at a couple of people.
