IT HAS been a year of extremes for hockey player Alan Forsyth. Last April, Forsyth was voted players’ player of the year after finishing as the top scorer in the English Men’s Premier Division for his club, Surbiton. It was the first time that a Scot had ever receive the accolade and at that point, it seemed that Forsyth was odds-on to be selected for the GB squad for the Rio Olympics. However, just a couple of months later, he received a crushing blow: he had been omitted from the 16-man squad that would travel to Brazil.

The decision was met with utter shock in Scotland, with former internationalist Laurence Docherty calling it “the most outrageous situation” he had ever heard of. It is hard to disagree. But Forsyth has never vocalised any indignation he felt about being left out of the squad and, in fact, he is adamant that it will drive him on to greater things in the future.

“That was obviously hugely disappointing because the reason I play hockey is to try to win a medal at the Olympic Games,” he said. “But that’s part and parcel of playing elite sport and so you just have to get on with it. I need to use Rio as a learning curve and a motivation and think, 'Do I want to feel the same way as I did last year? And I definitely don’t.”

In the aftermath of his Rio disappointment, Forsyth, perhaps fortunately, had little time to dwell on things. Almost immediately he was called up for Scotland duty with the Paisley-born striker helping his team to qualify for World League 2. That second phase of the competition begins tomorrow in Belfast and if the Scots can secure qualification to World League 3, they will have the opportunity to qualify for this summer’s Hockey World Cup.

However, Scotland face stiff competition. The world No.27 side have been drawn in a group alongside France, Poland and Wales, and with France and Poland both top-20 teams Scotland go in as underdogs. However, Forsyth believes that his team has the ability to pull off an upset.

“We’re feeling confident and we know that when we’re on it – we can do very well,” he said. “We know that we are good enough. It’s just making sure that we can get back-to-back wins because, in the past, we’ve beaten higher-ranked teams but then we’ve followed that up with a draw against another team that, on paper, we should beat. So it’s about getting consistency and playing well throughout the entire week.”

However, with men’s hockey having had its support from the Sportscotland Institute of Sport withdrawn a couple of years ago, the team are up against it when trying to compete with countries which pump money into their national teams. Since Forsyth was invited to join the GB set-up in 2015, he has been afforded the opportunity to train full-time, but for his compatriots who still ply their trade in Scotland, they must try to maintain a top-class level of hockey whilst holding down full-time jobs.

It is not an easy task and Forsyth is aware how much of a disadvantage his team is at when they are unable to prepare as a squad in the lead-up to major events like the World League due to financial constraints.

“It’s such a shame that we don’t get much time together before major tournaments and that makes it incredibly hard for us,” he said. “Our target is to beat teams who are higher ranked than us and that’s not impossible. But France, for example, has a budget that is three times the size of ours. Money isn’t everything but the more money you have, the more time you can spend together training and so the better the team is going to get. It’s frustrating because we have a lot of talent but I feel like we’ve not been given a full opportunity with financial support to allow us to fulfill that potential. People want results from us but they’re not willing to provide us with the support that will help us get those results. So it’s tough, but that’s where we are and we just have to deal with it.”

Following the conclusion of World League 2, Forsyth will return to training at Bisham Abbey in Buckinghamshire having been re-selected for the GB squad for the 2020 Olympic cycle. Despite his Rio disappointment, Forsyth believes that he has every chance of fulfilling his Olympic dream by making it to Tokyo and he is confident that his experience of 2016 will stand him in good stead.

“I feel like I’ve still got loads of room for improvement – I’ve only been in the GB squad for around 18 months so I feel like I’ve still got so much more to learn to make sure that, come 2020, I’m in the team,” he said. “I don’t feel that being Scottish puts me at any disadvantage for GB. The biggest problem is that there’s 26 players in the GB squad but only 16 for the Olympics so it’s a tough job to narrow it down. But by Tokyo I’ll be 28 and that’s the age that players are normally coming into their prime so, hopefully, I will be too.”