For 19-year-old Sean King, it will mean the end of his Olympic dream. For team captain Craig Figes, aged 30, the end of his international career.
For performance director Nick Hume and head coach Jerome Read, it may mean looking for new jobs.
A decision by UK Sport's board not to allocate realistic funding to eight Olympic and four Paralympic sports has had an immediate and catastrophic effect on the lives of 32 young water polo players and their coaches.
Even before UKS meet again on January 29 to decide how much of a consolation pot of £12 million each will receive, British Swimming, water polo's governing body, have moved to cancel 90 per cent of its Olympic squad's competitive programme next year.
Britain's men have been pulled out of the World League, just when they had been invited to make their debut in a powerful grouping of Italy, Montenegro and Romania. Every other international match planned has been scrapped.
There are fears that the High Performance Centre at Manchester and the regional centres will be closed after March and Great Britain training sessions curtailed because pool hire will be too expensive under the minimal funding which is likely.
Young players who signed one-year contracts for student homes to next July when they moved to join the squad in Manchester now fear they will not be able to pay their rent if their £600-a-month grants are ended.
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