Surbiton's six Great Britain hockey players began their Olympic adventure this week, flying to the BOA holding camp in Macau ahead of the tournament in Beijing next month.

All six managed to avoid the heartbreak of last-minute injury in the two recent preparation games, played at the Braxgata Hockey Club, near Antwerp, last Thursday and Friday evenings.

Great Britain, ranked eighth in the world, first drew 1-1 and then lost 3-1 against hosts Belgium, who are ranked 14th.

Only when Team GB arrived at the ground did they discover that, because of a lack of both officially-appointed umpires and a match delegate, caps were not being awarded and that the fixtures had been downgraded from official internationals to practice games.

The visitors, who had travelled out with just their nominated Olympic squad, which is only permitted to be 16 with two additional nominated injury-replacements, instead of the normal 18 throughout international tournaments, soon were given a taste of the problems this limitation might bring in Beijing.

Their five outfield rolling subs were rapidly reduced to four in just the second minute of the first game when Scotland's Stephen Dick had to leave the field for good after a clash of heads with a Belgian defender.

That number shrank to only three for Friday's game with Dick still unable to play and central defender and main penalty corner striker Richard Mantell taken ill overnight.

The host country, by contrast, took advantage of the unofficial status of the games to use their one nominated injury-replacement outfielder as well as the five selected, although the six were reduced to five for Friday after one of them had suffered a similar cheekbone injury to Dick in the final minute of Thursday's game.

Belgium also gave their nominated injury-replacement goalkeeper a full game on Friday, while GB substituted theirs, who was travelling with them, 13 minutes into the second half.

At least it was a successful two evenings for Surbiton's James Tindall, who scored both GB's goals. After having an early effort disallowed, quite correctly, he finally managed Thursday's equaliser five minutes from time after being set up by club-mates Richard Alexander and Matt Daly.

Tindall also scored an equaliser in the second game, this time from a penalty corner that he himself forced in the 44th minute. But the Belgians scored twice in the last seven minutes to run out deserved winners.

Despite these disappointing results, at least Tindall, Alexander and Daly - together with their club-mates Ben Hawes, Ben Marsden and Rob Moore - are now looking forward to competing for Olympic medals from August 16 to 23.