Cardiff Huskies celebrate 30 years of life on ice
· Yahoo Sports
For one of the UK's original Para-ice hockey teams, May 2026 is significant for Cardiff Huskies as it is 30 years since their first competitive game.
Visit h-doctor.club for more information.
Just like many other Para-sports organisations, the Huskies really are more than just a club.
A slow beginning
Sledge hockey, now known as Para-ice hockey, came to the fore at the 1994 Winter Paralympics when the sport was first introduced.
Prior to the Lillehammer Paralympics, the sport - which had been invented in the early 1960s for patients at the Stockholm Rehabilitation Centre, Sweden - was little known.
The speed and high-impact collisions attracted huge attention for a couple of weeks in March 1994, but after the Games in Norway ended the sport returned to largely being unknown.
A year later, there were still no properly constituted clubs or league in the UK.
Then it all changed when a few Cardiff Devils fans were lamenting the poor performance of their team in the spring of 1995.
"As these things do, it started all over a beer in a bar," said former Great Britain player Andy McNulty.
"I was a season-ticket holder at the Cardiff Devils, and we were struggling a bit. We had just watched a particularly poor game.
"And I said to my mates, Ken Ridell and Jammo [David James], 'I could do better than that!'
"Out of the blue Ken - who was an ice hockey referee as well - said, 'I might be able to sort something for you about that'.
"Apparently, he had been asked a few weeks before to referee a [sledge hockey] game for the GB team."
A couple of weeks later some equipment arrived provided by the wheelchair sports charity, WheelPower.
"They sent these plastic seats attached to a very basic frame with some hockey blades underneath and some shortened ice hockey sticks that we used to get ourselves around," McNulty said.
"No helmets, no body armour, so it was very basic.
"Then the owner of the Cardiff Devils at the time, David Temme, said: 'If you can get it off the ground, I won't charge you to use the rink for six weeks and see how you get on.'"
Take-up was slow at first, but McNulty spread the word among old friends and after six weeks the fledgling team had half a dozen new players.
'A minority sport within a minority'
One other person who came was a 23-year-old, Joanna Coates-McGrath (nee Coates), who passed away after a short illness in February this year.
"The first time I went, I didn't go in sports kit because I was determined I wasn't going to play. So, for the first week I just watched," Coates-McGrath said before her death.
"I did start taking part from the next week, but what always intrigued me was that I just wanted to organise it.
"I was just asking those questions, 'who runs this, how are you set up and how are you going to keep it going?'
"We were the first club. There was GB, but there were no clubs.
"I looked into setting up the club properly with a constitution, getting committees together, grants that we could apply for, getting sponsorship and it just went from there."
Coates-McGrath – who was Cardiff Met Sport's disability and inclusive sport co-ordinator - reflected: "It was a minority sport within a minority. People hadn't heard of it; they didn't know what sledge hockey was.
"The toughest bit was building the player base when you didn't have the links - the internet, social media or organisations - that we have now.
"It was all word-of-mouth stuff, stopping people in the street, doing demonstration games during the breaks of a Cardiff Devils game to people who might know someone who wants to come and play."
Lift-off with 'Welsh' derby
Finally, after many sessions on the ice, in May 1996 a match was arranged that appeared to be a Welsh derby.
McNulty said: "Our first proper game calling ourselves the Cardiff Huskies was away against Deeside Dynamos.
"We all drove up in convoy to north Wales, there was no funding for things like a club minibus back then.
"The ice wasn't great, the rink hadn't bothered to run the Zamboni ice machine over it.
"The Deeside players were largely a bunch of GB players mostly based in the Manchester area and used the Deeside rink for their sessions.
"We got beat 6-1 but we weren't disappointed, it was good fun, we really enjoyed it."
With opposition in the UK still limited, soon enough the Huskies looked further afield.
"The first time we went to Germany we played this game in Hanover against what we thought was just a local team," McNulty said.
"There were hundreds of people in the rink because they'd just been watching the able-bodied game.
"They were trying to build the German hockey side up, they were in their infancy and had sponsorship from Mercedes, so there was a guy there in his suit with the Mercedes logo on it, he didn't look very happy at the end of the game.
"Hanover were basically the German national hockey team, and we beat them. It was one of the first games that we'd ever won."
Cardiff Huskies players have gone on to represent Great Britain at international level [Getty Images]Confidence, fitness, mental health and big hits
As the sport grew in the UK in the 1990s, Cardiff Huskies had various players called up to the Great Britain squad.
Current Huskies coach Andy Brown said: "We've had quite a few talented male athletes with us who have played for GB such as Andy McNulty, Llyr Gwyndaf, Kim James, Matt Broadbent, Stephen Thomas and Nathan Stephens."
Stephens and Thomas first became Paralympians when they represented GB at the 2006 Turin Winter Paralympics. They both went on to achieve the distinction of being summer Paralympians as well.
Stephens represented GB in track and field in the men's F57 javelin at the 2008 and 2012 Paralympic Games.
For a while Stephens was the best in his event, winning gold at the 2011 Paralympic World Championships and later the same year he broke the world record.
Thomas went on to become a three-time world champion in Para-sailing and raced for GB at three consecutive Paralympic Games.
Huskies were a mixed outfit from the very earliest of days and have seen a number of women pull on a GB vest for the mixed team.
They have also been a leading club for providing women for GB with five players – Shannon Couch, Leanne Emmerson, Jodie Hill, Helen McGivern and Dani Czernuszka-Watts – selected for the inaugural Women's World Championships held in August 2025.
In the three decades since that post-match pint, Cardiff Huskies have undeniably changed some people's lives.
Huskies head coach Andy Brown said: "I started as a player and with my disability [muscular dystrophy] I was very weak and was barely able to skate, but by being resilient and coming every week I grew and grew, and then I was able to have enough strength to play in a game.
"Some people who are newly disabled, we can be amongst the first people that they meet with something similar; for them it's, 'Oh, there are some people like me'."
Current Huskies forward Josh Davies explained how he came to take up Para-ice hockey, saying: "I had my 20th birthday in hospital. On 7 February 2011 I was felling a tree on our family trout farm, and the tree fell on me and broke my back, so no feeling from the waist down. It was hard to get over, but you've got to keep going.
"My dad is Canadian, so I've always been passionate about hockey. He coached his own street hockey team, and I played for them from the age of eight, so I've always followed the Cardiff Devils and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
"It was a good 10 years before I started feeling like I wanted to get out and play sport, it took me a long time to gain the confidence.
"I found Cardiff Huskies one day on Facebook and jumped at the chance to give it a go, and after the first session I fell in love with it straightaway.
"It was hard to begin with using muscles I didn't know I had. It took a while to get my balance, but I'm getting somewhere now.
"Once you've got the right set-up on your sled you're away, it just clicks.
"It's as brutal as stand-up hockey, fast-paced, a lot of strategy in it. You've got to keep your head up all the time because there are big hits coming in from anywhere. I love the big hits, I thrive off them.
"It gave me loads of confidence, my fitness and mental health improved, and I met a load of good friends.
"I've played in one World Championships; I'm hoping one day to reach the Paralympics."
Brown added: "It's about growing people. When they come sometimes, they can be insecure, but they just develop in confidence and strength. It's just brilliant.
"I'm so proud of the team, just good people, amazing people."