JACOB Draper’s quest to become the first Welshman to play hockey for Great Britain at the Olympics since 2000 remains on track after Tokyo qualification was sealed in London.

The 21-year-old from Griffithstown played his part as Britain beat Malaysia 9-3 over two legs to secure their place at next year’s Olympics.

Defeat would have meant no GB men’s team at an Olympic Games since Moscow in 1980, but a 4-1 victory followed by an Alan Forsyth-inspired 5-2 triumph got the job done.

Skipper Adam Dixon said: "I’m not going to lie, it’s a massive sense of relief. There was a lot of pressure on these two games.

“We knew that pressure and nerves would come into it, so we tried to tackle it head on and channel it.

“Nerves are only a human emotion, we took it on the chin and put two good performances. To wrap it up with a ticket to Tokyo makes it even sweeter.

"We got off to a flyer but I never really felt totally confident until Aldo (Forsyth) scored that final penalty stroke with four minutes to go, only then did I think that we’d got it in the bag!

"Malaysia kept on coming and we knew that would be the case. I think we dug deep defensively, we just had to make sure we didn’t make any silly errors and in large parts that’s exactly what we did.

"Scoring nine goals is the icing on the cake. We’re lucky that we do have some real talent in that forward line with an eye for goal, so we just play to our strengths, that’s certainly a massive part of it but it’s been a great team effort.

"Now I’m really excited about what's ahead. There’s still loads of hard work to do to catch up with the top teams in the world but after a little break now we’ll regroup and will be back to business looking forward to the FIH Pro League again.

"We need to make sure that winning becomes a bit of a habit, I want this team to enjoy moments like this, winning games off the back of good team performances and if we can build momentum like this over the next eight months then that would be really good."

GB women, featuring Wales’ Leah Wilkinson, also left it late to qualify, but a 5-1 aggregate win against Chile saw the champions from Rio progress to defend their title.

Britain eased to a 3-0 win in the first match at the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, where all four matches were played, and then overcame the South Americans 2-1.