COMING home is meant to deliver a sense of familiarity but for Kenny Bain it can often have the opposite effect. The 27-year-old has spent the past seven years living in the Netherlands, a country where many hockey players are cherished and worshipped like celebrities. Living in Amsterdam city centre with his girlfriend – the recently-retired German international Julia Mueller – it is not difficult to see why he has little plans to return to Scotland any time soon.

Hockey has little of that profile in this country. If Bain is recognised as he walks around the Glynhill Hotel in Renfrew, it is mainly because he used to work there as a teenager, serving meals as a waiter at functions, weddings and office Christmas parties. Despite being a Scotland regular with more than 150 caps, his return home this week has been met with little fanfare.

“It’s black and white the difference between the two countries,” he admits. “I live and breathe hockey over there. Go out your front door and you’ll see a kid on his bike with his hockey stick going to training. You would never see that here.

“I’ve been there for so long that I’ve got a bit of a profile so kids do come up and say hello or ask for an autograph. But others get it even more. My girlfriend has just retired from the German national team and she’s a superstar back home. And I’ve also played alongside a few Dutch internationals and when you go anywhere with them they are always getting stopped for photos.

“They’re celebrities over there. The Dutch squad have even just recorded a music single and video with a local popstar – we’d be lucky to meet Michelle McManus never mind do a song with her!

“I’m playing games most week in front of 500 to 1000 fans. When I was playing for Amsterdam the crowds were often 2000 to 3000. I come back here and it’s my mum and my dog watching.”

There will hopefully be a few more at Glasgow Green this week for the start of the European Championships B Division that get underway this afternoon.

The men’s national team, in particular, have found themselves trapped in something of a vicious circle of late. Having their sportscotland funding reduced due to perceived poor results, reduced the opportunity for the team – many of whom are still part-time and working full-time jobs – to train together, especially with many living in England or overseas.

Despite that setback, however, performances have been positive. They reached the World League semi-finals in London this summer, where decent performances against some of the leading hockey nations were not borne out by results. The aim this week will be to reach the final to finally win promotion to the A division after years of trying but falling short.

“It’s going to be exciting to be playing on home turf and having all your family and friends there to watch you,” he adds. “It’s good for Scottish hockey too and hopefully they can get a big more publicity on the back of it.

“We have to get to the semi-finals. That’s the main objective. If we get there we just need to win it and get to the final as we have to get promoted. That’s all that matters. But it’s going to be hard. The fact we haven’t got out of this division shows how hard it is to do that. But if we get to the semi-final we’ll be confident as we know that on any day we can beat anyone.”

At 27, Bain is already a veteran, playing in his first European Championships a decade ago when he was still a player with Kelburne and doing his silver service bit on the side. This will be his sixth finals appearance.

“I was at my first one in 2007 and someone posted a picture of it recently online and it seems so long ago,” he said. “I was there with my shaved head and chunky wee face and just look really excited to be there. That’s when it kicked in how long I’ve been at this.

“I scored probably the best goal of my career against Ukraine in the first one when I was just 16. It was 0-0 going into the last few minutes and I got the ball on the halfway line and just ran the whole way and put a back-hand shot into the top corner. That was the first real moment when I thought, ‘I can do this’. And it’s worked out pretty well for me since then.

“The only crap thing is that this is my sixth B division tournament and of the previous five we’ve come third three times. That’s the biggest killer – just missing out on promotion every time.

“In the last one I was player of the tournament and Alan Forsyth was the top goalscorer. But we lost in a shoot-out in the semi-final and we knew we should have won it. That was the hardest to take. So we don’t want that again this time. We have to make home advantage count and finally get over the line.”