Ireland captain Sean Murray is dreaming of the prospect of playing hockey for his country at this summer's Olympic Games in Paris, however, the former Lisnagarvey man is not looking beyond this month’s qualifiers in Spain.
Three places are up for grabs at this final qualification tournament in Valencia, which takes place between 13 and 21 January with Ireland eyeing up a place in the final, which would stamp their ticket to Paris.
"Olympics is the big one in hockey, it’s the dream and when you are young you want to play at the Olympic Games," said Murray, speaking at the squad training session at Lisnagarvey Hockey Club in County Down."
"We waited around since after Tokyo and now we are ready and want to make sure we qualify for Paris."
Two groups of four sees Ireland matched with Ukraine, Japan and the highly rated Belgians with the top two going through to the semi-finals.
The finalists will go straight to the Olympics, and they will be joined by the winner of the third place play-off.
"We'd be confident we can get the group off to a good start with a win against Ukraine," said Murray.
"Japan, we don't know too much about, [so] we will treat the Japan game as a must-win game. We know that they are experienced.
"And Belgium are the favourites, but we know that we can get at them," said Murray, who plays his club hockey in the Belgian league with Gantoise.
Spain and Korea will be expected to come through the other group and with both sides currently ranked higher than Ireland in the world standings, Murray is well aware that his side will have to earn their place in the top three to guarantee an Olympic berth.
And going to the tournament as underdogs is a tag that suits the current Ireland squad, and one that the team can use to motivate themselves to get across the line at the Spanish tournament.
"The underdog mentality, as an Irishman, all around the squad, we love it," said Murray.
"We’ve done it lots of times in the past when we’ve been out for the count, and come back and succeeded.
"So hopefully we can use that, and if it comes down to the dying minutes, we can use that and we’ll have confidence in ourselves."
The squad leave for Spain on Sunday ahead of the qualification tournament and will be motivated to go one step futher than last time out when they narrowly missed out on Tokyo 2020 qualification by the narrowest of margins in Canada four years ago.
"We just have to trust in what we have been doing," said Murray.
"I remember as a kid watching in 2012 when they narrowly missed against Korea (for the London Games), and I was there in Canada when we narrowly missed out [on Tokyo] so it hurts, but a lot of us were there and now we have done the prep, and we are ready to make sure we qualify."
And should Ireland manage to secure safe passage to the Summer Games, preparations will begin in earnest upon their return when they can look forward to competitive action against high quality opposition in the build-up to Paris.
"If we do manage to qualify for the Olympic games, we then have 10 days at home before we head to India for the first of our FIH Pro League series of games," said Murray.
"Those games will be ideal preparation for the challenge of playing at the summer Olympics if we manage to get one of the three spots on offer in Valencia. But the first thing is to get through this qualification tournament and get one of the three places available."
