MANCHESTER, Great Britain – He was the first British-born and raised player to be drafted by an NHL team and was later described by legendary coach Glen Sather as "the smartest player there other than Wayne Gretzky". Tony Hand is arguably the finest player Great Britain has ever produced and is at the age of 43 still going strong as player-coach of the Manchester Phoenix in the English Premier Ice Hockey League, EPIHL.

Having been born and brought up in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, where football and rugby are traditionally the two dominant sports, how come you started playing ice hockey?

My auntie was the part-owner of the Murrayfield ice rink so I went there with my two brothers and we sort of just carried it on. I was about nine or ten when I skated my first time. I had tried football and rugby at school, but I wasn't very good at those. With ice hockey it was different. I used to skate five, six times a week and I just loved to be around the ice rink. I was pretty good at it, too, and we were fortunate because we were given as much free ice time as we could handle, so it was easy to improve your game.

Murrayfield Racers, the Edinburgh club you started playing hockey for, were around that time a highly successful team, having won the British Championship four years in a row between 1969-1972. What was the interest for ice hockey like in Scotland when you grew up?

Back in those days there weren't as many imports, only about two or three for each team, so all the British guys were given a chance to do well. But the interest for the game also used to be a lot better. When Murrayfield Racers played Fife for instance, we use to sell out and have 3,000 people at the games, so it has changed a lot. There is still an interest for ice hockey in Edinburgh, but not as strong as it used to be, which is a bit of a shame.

You were only 14 when you made your first team debut for the Racers back in 1981. But it was at the end of the 1985-1986 season that your career took a drastic turn when the Edmonton Oilers selected you in the 12th round and 252nd overall in the NHL Entry Draft.

I had won the Young Player of the Year award at the end of that season and the prize was to go and join the Calgary Flames for a training camp as a sort of promotional thing. So I was looking forward to that, but never realized that Edmonton Oilers had drafted me shortly thereafter. I then got a phone call from a radio station in Edmonton asking me what I thought about coming to the Oilers and I said that I wasn't going there. I told them that I was going to Calgary because they had asked me first. I was just being naive before I realized that it wasn't a joke and that I had in fact been drafted by the Oilers and that they were now owning my rights. Garry Unger (1,105 career NHL-games) was in Scotland at the time and must have recommended me to the Oilers after he had seen me play.

So off you went to Canada to join the Edmonton Oilers' training camps in 1986 and 1987 and survived complete fortnights on both occasions without being cut. What memories do you have from rubbing shoulders with legends such as Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier?

There were also guys like Marty McSorley, Paul Coffey, Dave Semenko, Kevin McClelland, Jari Kurri and Kevin Lowe there, and it was pretty enjoyable. It was just being on the ice to get the training done every day. I think the fitness was the main difference, and it was a huge factor. Back home I was just skating all the time and I had never done anything else. But these guys were lifting weights, running and cycling. It wasn't until I got a bit older that I realized that you have to do a lot of other things instead of just skate, so we were a bit behind with that in Scotland. The second year I was over I played in an exhibition game for the Oilers against Canada's Olympic team. I can't remember that much from the game, but I did get an assist for a fine goal by Kevin Lowe, so it was a great experience.

Glen Sather, then head coach and GM of the Edmonton Oilers, seems to remember you with fondness: "At the training camp I could see that he had great ability to read the ice and he was the smartest player there other than Wayne Gretzky." Still you turned him down during the contract negotiations when he wanted you to stay in Canada and develop your game. Why?

It's a pretty nice thing to say from him, and the contract negotiations were pretty daunting when I am looking back at it now. He was this very successful GM who had won all those Stanley Cup's and I was just a kid from Scotland negotiating a deal. To be fair, there weren’t a lot of negotiations going on, but more of him telling me what I was going to get. But at that time I just loved played over in Britain and I had been a bit homesick too, so perhaps it was just a bit of naivety from my part. In hindsight I wish I could have been hanging around there, but it's nothing that keeps me awake at night and it's in the past, but yes, it would have been nice to see what would have come of it all.

You then permanently returned to play your professional ice hockey in Britain. Have you had any other offers from abroad since?

I had an offer from HPK Hämeenlinna from Finland years ago, and I went down to Servette in Geneva, Switzerland, when I was 22-23. I think they were playing with three imports at the time and I was going to be the fourth. I would have been sitting around for a while, as they had NHL guys waiting to play, so I thought it's wasn't for me and never went. But going abroad might be something I might look into in terms of coaching in Europe sometime in the future.

In 1996 The Ice Hockey Superleague was formed by the richest clubs in Britain in an effort to attract better players and to increase the popularity of the sport. To begin with, it was a success and an attendance of 17,245 (European record for ice hockey at the time) were at the game between the Manchester Storm and the Sheffield Steelers in 1997 for instance. Soon the interest was waning and the league disbanded in 2003 to give way for the Elite Ice Hockey League, EIHL. What memories do you have from those years?

The level of ice hockey was just on a totally different level. The players you had here then, like the third line guys then were all top East Coast Hockey League guys, and it's the best level of league hockey I have ever played in. The competition was good, the professionalism was good and the goaltending was outstanding. It brought the hockey to another level in Britain, even for me as a player, because all of a sudden you were forced to raise your game to another level in the Superleague and I managed to do that and get the points going. They probably shouldn't have spent as much money, and maybe have tried to consolidate, because it was just an imported league. It was ok short term, but long term it was never going to sustain itself. Because imports were continually brought in and there were no sort of grassroots and just a few British guys, which was the mistake they made.

On an international level, you were part of the Great Britain team that qualified and played at the top division in the 1994 IIHF World Championship in Italy. What are you memories from that tournament which ended up with straight defeats and relegation for Team GB?

To be honest, we shouldn't have been there. We weren't ready to play in the top division, and we never had the training facilities. We had just finished our season and went to the World Championship, without a training camp to face teams like the Russians and the Canadians. I think now we have a lot better British players around, who had played at a higher level, but in those days our structure wasn't prepared to play at that level. I can't remember how many of the players had dual passports, but a lot of the team were dual nationalities, and that's was just a short term fix.

Great Britain has since been close on a few occasions of getting back to the top division. What do you think of Team GB's current prospects of making a return to the top division sometime soon?

To get back to the top would be very tough for Britain, but I would love to see them do it. I think now we have a lot more better players, a lot more British guys who have played at a higher level than we had in 1994. We do have a pretty good team and a good coach in Paul Thompson, but for us the problem is that we finish the Elite Ice Hockey League and then in about four days we go to the World Championship Division I. Other national teams go away and have breaks during the season to play international matches. We basically just go, so we have one hand tied behind our backs trying to do it.

And finally, what do you think are the chances that another British-born and trained player will be picked in an NHL draft anytime soon to follow in the footsteps of yourself and fellow Scotsman Colin Shields (Philadelphia Flyers 195th overall in the 2000 entry draft)?

Right now no name comes to mind, but I would love to see it because there are a lot of good British players here. But to get to the next level most of the guys have to do like Colin Shields did when he went over to play in North America from a young age. I think to get drafted straight from Britain you would have to be something totally exceptional. I think the guys have to leave and go to either to North America or maybe Sweden or Finland to develop.

HENRIK MANNINEN