Regular visitors to The Hockey Museum (THM) website or our Hockey Shorts emails (click here to sign up) will be aware of the very active project to present honours caps to current and former Great Britain (GB) players or, if deceased, their families. The project arose from our work to collate a definitive record of GB match and player statistics enabling THM to know who played for GB, for how many times and what their unique player number is.

If you’re a new website visitor, welcome; some of the project’s success stories can be discovered by clicking here (re. Harry Haslam), here (re. Bridget Cannell) and here (re. 2021 GB squads).

Bridget Cannell’s daughter, Tracy French, and son, Mike Cannell, received their mother’s honours cap from former Great Britain internationals Jan Burrows (former England captain, second left) and Mary Eckersall (former England & GB captain, far right).

The Presentation Of GB Caps

The majority of the GB honours caps will be presented in May and June 2022 at the Pro League matches in front of sizeable crowds, meantime THM is proceeding with some individual and group/squad presentations. Indeed, we have just ordered the 100th cap for presentation – quite the milestone for our entirely volunteer-led project!

THM is only ordering caps as and when required because we know that not every player or their ancestors will claim their cap. Our experience here has come from the British Lions rugby setup who ordered a ‘full set’ at the outset and still have 300 unclaimed.

The 100th cap is for Anthony (Tony) Nunn (pictured during a visit to THM in 2019) who we believe to be the last surviving player from the 1952 Helsinki bronze medal-winning team. We have already presented John Peake with his cap after he represented GB at the 1948 London Olympic Games, so we are now looking to the Melbourne team from 1956. If you have any information about our ageing GB players, please do let us know. We have also made presentations to players who have sadly become unwell. Similarly, if you know of any GB players in failing health, we will do all we can to arrange a presentation. 

We are also in the process of arranging two group presentations.

The first is for the GB & Ireland women’s touring team to the USA in 1965 – for more information on this story click here. The survivors will be meeting in South Wales later this month to receive their caps.

The second group is the GB men’s touring team to Australia in 1966. Of the 18 who made the trip, 16 are still alive and 12 are coming to the museum to receive their caps and enjoy a reunion lunch. The other four players, two of whom are overseas, will be receiving their caps in private presentations. Of the two deceased players, their captain David Prosser received his cap before his untimely death in January and the other, Howard Harrison, will be represented by his son at the reunion. 18 out of 18 can’t be a bad result!

If you are a former player yourself interested in a group presentation and reunion, please do get in touch with THM via our online contact form.

Like What We’re Doing? Please Donate.

If you’re inspired by what we are doing, please consider donating to The Hockey Museum. We are a charity museum and we need your support. Click here to learn how.