Thompson relieved after GB are granted delayed face-off

Britain - who secured a bronze medal in last year's Division One tournament in Poland - have been forced to drastically alter their travel plans to Slovenia after all UK flights were grounded due to the volcanic ash fallout from Iceland which has affected a large part of Northern Europe.

They were due to open the tournament in Llubljana against Croatia at 1pm on Saturday but, now that they are being forced to undertake a 24-hour plus coach journey across Europe to get there, beginning on Friday afternoon - the IIHF have agreed to put the face-off back to 4.30pm with the clash between Korea and Hungary becoming the event's opening match.

Britain's players and coaching staff are expected to travel across Europe throughout the night in a desperate bid to make it to the former Yugoslav republic on time.

"The last 24 hours have been manic with us stuck down here at Gatwick airport," said Thompson.

"While I am not relishing the next 24 hours being sat on a bus going to Slovenia, at least we now know that our first game has been moved to allow us an extra four hours or so.

"We still don't expect to arrive at the rink until close to midday, but we will get there and do our level best.

"Its far from perfect preparation but sometimes adversity works in wonderful ways.

"Spirits in the camp are good, in fact in a funny way this whole last day or say has made us laugh and brought the whole group closer together, you never know if we win this tournament it might become GB standard practice."

Sheffield Steelers' Jonathan Phillips, Jason Hewitt and Rob Dowd are among the 23-strong squad along with Hull Stingrays' forward Lee Mitchell, who made his international debut in the first of two warm-up games against the Netherlands last weekend.

Ashley Tait, who is returning to Steelers as player-assistant-coach next season, is hoping to play some part as soon as his Italian club's end-of-season play-off series is over.