"I Was Embarrassed And Ashamed Of How It Went"

With 164 GB and England caps, several medals and plenty of spectacular goals to his name, there has been a lot for Mark Gleghorne to celebrate in his international career.

But it’s not been all plain sailing, with the Antrim-born player having to overcome several serious injuries.

However, in the latest episode of Inside The Circle: The Podcast, he opens up about how the Rio 2016 Olympics was the most difficult period of time for him so far.

“We went in there ranked fourth in the world at the time, we had got to the medal games in pretty much every tournament we’d played over the previous four years,” he recalled. 

“That was a really good team in my opinion. But we just massively underperformed. 

“What went wrong? Probably lots of little things rather than one big thing.”

While the women went on to win gold that year, the men failed to make it out of a difficult group that included Belgium, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.

They only lost two of their five games – the same number as Australia and New Zealand – but only registered one victory, meaning they couldn’t improve on their fourth-placed finish from London 2012.

Having waited so long for his chance to realise his dream and play at an Olympic Games, Gleghorne admitted he struggled to come to terms with what happened for a long time after the event ended.

“That was a really difficult time because the Olympics is the big thing, that’s the dream,” he said. 

“You never expect it to go as wrong as it did. When I think back, at the time I was very embarrassed and ashamed of how we played and how it went. And that’s not something you ever think about when thinking of playing an Olympic Games. You think it’s going to be the pinnacle, the best. 

“We’d obviously tried to make sure we peaked at that time and that was so disappointing. We then had quite a long break from hockey afterwards - part of the problem with that then was that that was all you could think about. 

“I wasn’t really interested, I was really down in the dumps. I think a lot of the guys and staff were because it went so horrendously wrong for us.

“I wasn’t interested in going back and playing hockey but that was the worst thing for me because then all I was thinking about was how that went rather than focusing on the moment, what’s right in front of you.

“That break was a bad time but once I got back playing hockey that was better because when you get back into training and get a goal or are trying to improve you’re back in the moment playing and forgetting about what happened in the past.”

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics may have been pushed back a year but the former Ireland age-group cricketer still harbours strong ambitions to emulate what his aunt Jackie McWilliams did in 1992 and win an Olympic medal with Great Britain.

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