UK's oldest para-ice hockey team celebrates 30 years

Image source, BBC SportImage caption, Cardiff Huskies have come a long way from a handful of players 30 years ago For one of the UK's original Para-ice hockey teams, May 2026 is significant for Cardiff Huskies as it is 30 years since their first competitive game. Just like many so many novel ideas, it all began with a few friends sharing drinks in a pub. And like so many other para-sports organisations, the Huskies really are more than just a club. Sledge hockey, now known as Para-ice hockey, came to the fore at the 1994 Winter Paralympics when the sport was first introduced. Prior to the Lillehammer Paralympics, the sport - which had been invented in the early 1960s for patients at the Stockholm Rehabilitation Centre, Sweden - was little known. The speed and high-impact collisions attracted huge attention for a couple of weeks in March 1994, but after the Games in Norway ended the sport returned to largely being unknown. A year later, there were still no properly constituted clubs or league in the UK. Then it all changed when a few Cardiff Devils fans were lamenting the poor performance of their team in the spring of 1995. "As these things do, it started all over a beer in a bar," said former Great Britain player Andy McNulty. "I was a season-ticket holder at the Cardiff Devils and we had just watched a particularly poor game. "I said to my mates, Ken Ridell and Jammo [David James], 'I could do better than that!' "Out of the blue Ken - who was an ice hockey referee as well - said, 'I might be able to sort something for you about that'. "Apparently, he'd been asked a few weeks before to referee a [sledge hockey] game for the GB team." A couple of weeks later some equipment arrived provided by the wheelchair sports charity, WheelPower. "They sent these plastic seats attached to a very basic frame with some hockey blades underneath and some shortened ice hockey sticks that we used to get ourselves around," said McNulty. "No helmets, no body armour, so it was very basic. "Then owner of the Devils at the time, David Temme, said: 'If you can get it off the ground, I won't charge you to use the rink for six weeks and see how you get on.'" Take-up was slow at first, but McNulty spread the word among old friends and after six weeks the fledgling team had half a dozen new players. Image source, Cardiff HuskiesImage caption, Andy McNulty admits Cardiff Huskies started life "over a beer in a bar" One other person who came was a 23-year-old, Joanna Coates-McGrath (nee Coates), who passed away after a short illness in February this year. "The first time I went, I didn't go in sports kit because I was determined I wasn't going to play. So, for the first week I just watched," Coates-McGrath said before her death. "I did start taking part from the next week, but what always intrigued me was that I just wanted to organise it. "I was just asking those questions, 'who runs this, how are you set up and how are you going to keep it going?' "We were the first club. There was GB, but there were no clubs. "I looked into setting up the club properly with a constitution, getting committees together, grants that we could apply for, getting sponsorship and it just went from there." Coates-McGrath – who was Cardiff Met Sport's disability and inclusive sport co-ordinator - reflected: "It was a minority sport within a minority. People hadn't heard of it; they didn't know what sledge hockey was. "The toughest bit was building the player base when you didn't have the links - the internet, social media or organisations - that we have now. "It was all word-of-mouth stuff, stopping people in the street, doing demonstration games during the breaks of a Cardiff Devils game to people who might know someone who wants to come and play." Image source, Cardiff HuskiesImage caption, Nathan Stephens began his Para career at Cardiff Huskies and would represent Great Britain at both winter and summer Games Finally, after many sessions on the ice, in May 1996 a match was arranged that appeared to be a Welsh derby. McNulty said: "Our first proper game calling ourselves the Cardiff Huskies was away against Deeside Dynamos. "We all drove up in convoy to north Wales, there was no funding for things like a club minibus back then. "The ice wasn't great, the rink hadn't bothered to run the Zamboni ice machine over it. "The Deeside players were largely a bunch of GB players mostly based in the Manchester area and used the Deeside rink for their sessions. "We got beat 6-1 but we weren't disappointed, it was good fun, we really enjoyed it." With opposition in the UK still limited, soon enough the Huskies looked further afield. "The first time we went to Germany we played this game in Hanover against what we thought was just a local team," McNulty said. "There were hundreds of people in the rink because they'd just been watching the able-bodied game. "They were trying to build the German hockey side up, they were in their infa

UK's oldest para-ice hockey team celebrates 30 years

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