'I don't think the other teams bring a packed lunch' - how Wales broke a glass ceiling to reach Hockey World Cup

When athletes talk about the sacrifices they make to reach the top of their sports, there can be few better examples than Wales' men's hockey team.

The players not only have to fit in their training around full-time jobs or studying, but they also have to contribute their own money to the running of the national programme. This can be as much as £1,500 a year.

Back in 2015, this partly self-funded team of lecturers, students, project managers and NHS workers were at the "bottom of European hockey".

Now they have risen up the ranks to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in their history.

A tense shootout victory over Ireland in the 2021 Men's European Qualifier in Cardiff secured this momentous milestone, before they beat France in the final to win the tournament.

"There was a huge sense of relief, excitement, joy and anticipation of what's to come," co-captain Luke Hawker tells BBC Sport Wales.

"The World Cup is somewhere for me as a Welsh player that's always been a long way away and perhaps somewhat out of reach.

"So to have that realisation that a Welsh team would be going and I would have an opportunity to go and play at a World Cup was strange."

Wales co-captain Hawker works full-time as a senior lecturer at Cardiff Met University

When Hawker made his debut for Wales - nine years and 103 caps ago - the team was in Poland, staying in what Hawker describes as a "woodland cabin" and playing at a tiny venue in Poznań with no one watching.

Soon afterwards they were relegated to the bottom-tier, C Division EuroHockey Championships. Their world ranking of 34 meant they were, on paper at least, one of the continent's worst hockey teams.

"It gave us a chance to reset the group," says head coach Danny Newcombe, who served as an assistant to Zak Jones for almost a decade before taking over the top job when Jones moved to GB Hockey in 2020.

"We got a new group together and that group's just stuck together over the last six years.

"We've incrementally got better and better and better and we've just made the next breakthrough now.

"No Welsh men's team has ever been to a World Cup and to achieve that is not a surprise to me, with this group, but it's still an amazing achievement."

The men's World Cup - to be held in India in January 2023 - will pit Wales against the world's best, many of whom played at the Tokyo Olympics and the vast majority of players there will be fully-funded professionals.

Comparisons to the Welsh setup are like "chalk and cheese", according to Hawker, who says the players decided to start bringing their own packed lunches to training camps to save the cost of all going to a cafe.

Wales' national hockey teams attend training camps in Cardiff but players often have to fit these and the games around their full-time jobs.

Hockey Wales receives funding from Sport Wales and the National Lottery. But any deficits in its annual plans have to be met by the players.

"At the start of the year, there's a meeting," explains Hawker, "and the management staff say, 'we think the programme up to the next major tournament will be around about X number of pounds'.

"We look around the room and see if we're happy with that - can we afford it? Then there's a general nod or shake of the head.

"It's really difficult because as a staffing group they want to put together a programme that's going to help us to succeed and we're sat there going, okay this is what we want to do, but can we financially afford that?

"I'm not sure some of the top nations in the world are packing up their own lunch for camps. But having said that it's part of who we are and it keeps our feet on the ground, which I think is really important.

"It's nice to be able to show and demonstrate what can be achieved. You don't need loads of money, the comfiest changing room and all that stuff.

"You can achieve and you can be successful utilising the essentials."

'We were right at the bottom of European hockey'

From rock bottom in 2015, Wales were promoted to European hockey's B Division and in 2017 they finished runners-up in Glasgow to secure a spot at the continent's top table, alongside the likes of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

At the 2019 EuroHockey Championship they defied their ranking to finish sixth and retain their place. At this year's event they finished seventh and will fight to regain their spot next summer.

These achievements have not just required financial sacrifice. Players travel to Cardiff from far and wide for their occasional weekend training camps, yet most of their training happens early in the morning or late at night, before or after work.

When they do play in big tournaments, the players and coaching staff often have to take leave - sometimes unpaid - to be there. The next 15 months could require them to take weeks off work in order to play at the Commonwealth Games, EuroHockey qualifying tournament and World Cup.

Former player Ria Burrage-Male took over as chief executive permanently in December 2019.

Hockey Wales will now begin an ambitious fundraising campaign and want to target private sponsors.

Chief executive Ria Burrage-Male estimates it is likely to cost 10s of thousands of pounds to get the men's team to the World Cup alone.

"When I started playing in 2002, I paid to play," she says. "Nineteen years later, as the chief exec, I find myself in the same situation.

"It's something I want to fix, I want to rectify. I don't want these guys to have any further financial burden. We need to value hockey.

"The guys have demonstrated with limited resource they can break the glass ceiling. We now need to take it to the next step.

"I want us to be in the next World Cup in 2026, men and women. I want us to create a spectator habit so it's not just the parents and the squirrels watching our teams play hockey.

"We could get a thousand, two thousand or five thousand fans watching hockey and I genuinely believe they deserve that. I really do see us growing over the next five years and inspiring more people to play."

Head coach Newcombe believes one of the biggest barriers to the team's continuing improvement is a lack of games against high quality opposition.

Hockey Wales want to change this and, in turn, get more fans through the gates and even watching the games on television or streamed online.

Its national women's side is included in this too. They narrowly missed out on World Cup qualification in Pisa at the weekend, but like the men they still have the Commonwealth Games and European qualifiers to prepare for next summer.

"I genuinely believe if we can expose people to how brilliant the game is, we can be in a different place in five years' time," continues Burrage-Male.

"I want us to be at this World Cup and at the next one and the next one. This can't be a one-off World Cup. This is the start now."

'It should be about performing, not just getting by'

"What we're not asking for is to suddenly become full time or even semi-full-time," adds Newcombe. "These guys have all got jobs and careers.

"I'd just like to reward them a little bit. Hopefully with this impetus, we can secure some more funding and more sponsorship and take that next step.

"It would be such a shame not to take advantage of it."

With the funding requirements so great, it is an issue unlikely to be resolved overnight.

But Hawker maintains this "very humble" group of players do not want to go backwards now.

"I hope we really commit to going out there as a team that can compete and perform and achieve at that tournament," he says.

"Not just to be happy to be there because that's not what we're about as a group and that's not what hockey in Wales should be about.

"It should be about performing and being successful, not just getting by."

The journey from humble underdogs to a nation routinely competing with the world best will be a challenge.

But for Welsh hockey, it is a journey that starts now.