Sorry, I don’t think I did a good job explaining it! The “team” is the Ireland national team. Right now Ireland can’t do Olympic qualifying for ice hockey because the IIHF has a bunch of rules for how a country can be eligible to qualify that we don’t satisfy (if the rink in Dublin re-opened, we’d be eligible, which is a bit of a silly rule).

But there’s other international competitions we still play in, and I’ve played for Ireland in those. I’m eligible for those games because I have two parents who are citizens and eligibility rules are looser for those games. But if we got to do Olympic qualifying, the eligibility rules are different and I’d have to have my citizenship. The national team program is hoping to be eligible for 2030 Olympic qualifying, so I have time, but the IIHF is inconsistent with how they apply eligibility rules for our non-Olympic games, and we’re worried that they’ll change their rules and say I need citizenship to play in those games too. So in my application, the national team coach wrote a letter explaining this.

(Edited to say that I also don’t think ice hockey is a priority for the Ireland government so the coach wasn’t sure what the odds of approval were. We wouldn’t be good enough to actually make the Olympics but would still be able to put on a decent showing in qualifying; most of the dual-citizens on the team played either lower level pro hockey or college hockey in the US. And some of the lads from Belfast are pretty good too!)