Rollercoaster weekend...

So, on Saturday, our intrepid boys make their first ever trip down to Romford, presumably expecting a fairly staraightforward win against the leagues 'whipping boys'.

We leave on the wrong end of an 8-3 tonking.

OOOPS!

Apparently, RVW (thats Rom Valley Way) is a bastard of a rink to go to and get a result. Hostile fans, hostile announcers (Saturdays was thrown out of the booth for mouthing off at Payette), and poor lighting all combine to put pressure on visting teams.

Ah well, normal service was resumed last night, with an absolute belter of a game against Milton Keynes. 3-1 hardly reflects the game, as it was as close a could possibly be. Seriously, you couldn't have fitted a piece if paper between the two teams, it was that close.

The game was played pretty much at full throttle for the entire 60mins, with some outstanding plays made by both sides. Man of the Match for ourselves was Steve Fone, who put in an assured, cinfident performance, showing that Saturdays game hadn't affected him one bit.

And it was physical. lots of chipping away from both sides lead to a few tempers getting short, culminating in young Mr Bowie dropping the gloves for a little tete-a-tete with on of the MKL players (whose name I couldn't hear properly, sorry. I'll correct it when I get the match stats). Bowie just edged the scrap, but as seems to eb the norm in the EPL was 'rewarded' with just 2+2 for roughing. It was not roughing, it was a fucking fight! Deep breath.

Anyways, crowd was good, and seemed very up for it, making plenty of noise. I would guess that there were about 750-800 in the Dome, and allegedly only a handful were freebies, so thats all good.

And the ice was much improved. It probably helped that the ambient temperature inside the doem was quite a bit colder than last week (thankfully). The ice cuts are still embarassingly poor though. Too many missed patches and too many extra laps to sort them out. Would someone please show the lad how to do the ice cut correctly please! Anyone?

Other gubbins:

The Pyres pre and post match watering hole, the Station Inn, has now closed. The lovely landlady, Janet, has moved on after a dispute with the pubs owners. Which is a bit of a bugger, as it was fast becoming the best damn pub in Alty. Janet hopes to re-appera at Uluru (or whatever its called now) in the next few weeks, so a new venue might not be too far off!

And the official forum has managed to piss me off once more. It seems that frequent poster and serious Phoenix die hard 'The Rat' aka Pete Roden, has been banned after arguing wiht the site main moderator and admin, Carl. It looks like Carl didn't appreciate Petes response sin a thread as to why the league table wasn't accurate on the offcial site, and after some forum based arguing made acryptic post about Pete getting the 'next best thing to an ignore button' on him. Yes, Pete is blunt, and yes, he will butt heads with other posters, but whats the point of a forum without debate? Seems to me that Carl just didn't like being criticised, and has used his powers in an unfair manner.

(Thats why this blog exists. I can't say what i really want on the offical forum a lot of the time withour the risk of posts being deleted or being banned. Some people on there are fr too sensitive. So yay for the bog1)

Whooooo! Back at the Dome!

So, after a 2 week abscence, I returned to my 3rd 'home', the Ice Dome, and what a game it was!

We took a solid, 3 goal lead, only for the Phantoms to claw back to 3-2 in the 3rd period, giving more than a few fans a bit of a 'squeeky bum' feeling. Thankfully Big Ed was on hand to slot home a cracking winner towards the end of the game, making it a bit more relaxing.

Personally, I thought we played well as a team this week, possibly the best whole team performance I have seen yet this season. There were definatley fewer errors in the defensive zone, thankfully, but Fone still came out of his crease to play the puck behind the redline far to often for me. So Mr Fone, if you are reading this, a little message: STAY IN THE FUCKING CREASE FOR FUCKS SAKE!

Seriously, I have kittens almost everytime he does it. (on a side note, it seems to be a thing with Phoenix netminders. Platt did it, so did Wolfe, and Smurph. Must be something about playing in the Phoenix jersey). Oh yeah, and he is still coughing up too many rebounds for my liking, although the D seem to have the measure of this now.

Was quite a clean game too, with the ref (Wardell, IIRC), allowing the game to flow, and only calling when absolutely required to do so.

Other stuff:

Apaprently, Mags has had some signed player photos stolen from her over the past few weeks. Bastards. Just what the club needs. More money lost.

And now a moan about the Dome.

The ice maintainance is becoming, in the opinion of myself and others, worse and worse each week. The quality of the ice cuts is mostly piss poor, usually with far too much water laid down behind the zamboni. Added to this is the fact that it feels far too warm down at ice level. Seriously, the ice was as wet at the end of the 2nd and 3rd periods as it was immediately after the cut during the intervals.

I sincerely wish that the team at the Dome would get their shit together, but sadly, the management seem to be happy with the state of the ice as it is, so unless we complain en masse, I doubt anything will change anytime soon.

And thats it for now.

Another missed game....

...another solid win. Bugger.

Ah well, by all accounts, the team is starting to click, so fingers crossed for the rest of the season.

Bring on Saturday!

Telford to return? And more fantasy 'ideal league' stuff.

No games for me, but still stuff to talk about...

TELFORD TO RETURN?

If you click on this link HERE, you can read some encouraging news from Telford.

Looking at what the Telford Tigers Fans Trust are trying to do reminds me so much of the early days of FOMIH. I sincerely hope the trust can bring the Tigers back to the ice for the 2010-2011 season, as more teams means a stronger league for all of us.

WHAT ABOUT A POINTS SYSTEM?

So, I've already detailed a regional conference system, but how to manage the players? It is pretty obvious that if (when) the EIHL collapses, teams such as the Panthers would want to be included. The problem is though, the financial power of these clubs could and likely would see most of the top British talent stripped from existing clubs, thusly maintaining the status quo with the 'Big 4' being on top, and everyone else struggling to keep up, then going bust.

So what about a 'points' system? Each club has a maximum points value for the Brits in their squad, and each registered player has a points value, based on simple criteria, such as:

Age (+Points)
Experience (+Points)
Time spent at current club (-Points for long service, + points if player moves around a lot)
International Cap(+ Points)

So, Stevie Lyle would have a high points tally (fairly old, lots of experience, lots of clubs, played for Team GB a lot), whereas Adam Walker would have a comparatively low value (youngish, reasonable experience, not played for too many clubs, only Junior International caps ).

Properly administered, this should provide a relative parity amongst clubs, or at the very least stop 'Club X' from 'buying the league', and would also place a greater emphasis on developing your own players, rather than bringing them in from other clubs.

Thoughts, people?

No game review this week...

..or next folks.

I wasn't at this weekends game as I was at an engagement do down in Dunstable, and this coming weekend, I'm at my own engagement do...

2 weeks without a game.. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

From the sublime to the ridiculous...

Saturday: Bracknell 0-6 Manchester. Get in. Solid result away from home.

Sunday: Manchester 1-6 Slough. What the fuck?

Yup, it was a weekend of extremes for the Phoenix. A road win at Bracknell, by a convincing scoreline was reversed on Sunday by an absolute tonking at home to Slough.

And lets be honest, we were comfortably the poorer team on Sunday. No fluke goals, no poor reffing, no '1 man plays a blinder'. Slough were vastly superior to us in every aspect.

They came to the Dome with an obvious plan, involving high tempo play, solid forechecking, and rapidly closing down any passing channels we might have had going forwards, and they did this bloody well. Our D just could not contain Sloughs forwards, judging by just how much time they had on the puck, and how easily they scored.

Mattson had a bit of a mare. So did Boothroyd. Hell, our best D was Haggelberg, and he is technically a forward. Tony and Big Ed were almost entirely shut down, and the Brits jst could not get shots on target. So its time to gas someone, right?

Wrong! Despite the clamour on the offical forum for Payettes head (He is doing just fine thanks. Tony has told him what he wants, and Payette is giving him exactly that), gassing a forward to bring in a Defenseman is not sound thinkiing. Hell, who says we have the resources to bring another player in anyways? I personally think Tony needs to work more on the getting the D to hang back a bit more, and play more 'defensively'.

Think about it, we are 12 games into the season, sitting 3rd in the table with 9 wins and just 3 losses. Hardly panic stations just yet. If things are stioll the same on ice in a month, then we might have to try and change things, but not just yet.

And the crowd? Well, it was a tad smaller than last week (@700), but it was damn quiet. Even the Choir Boys (yes, I'll name them) gave up once it was clear we were done for.

Anyways, Onwards and upwards!

Fife for the EPL?

Check out this link:

Fife want to play at a higher level (thats not the EIHL)

So, Fife Flyers in the EPL? Yes please!

Now, I know this would be something that the Southern EPL teams would probably be agianst, simply because of the travelling, but hear me out. I propose a new 'British Premier Ice Hockey League' (BPIHL).

To keep costs down, I would split this into 2 conferences, thusly:

North:
Manchester Phoenix
Sheffield Scimitars
Fife Flyers
Dundee Stars
Solway Sharks
Whitley Warriors/Newcastle Vipers (Whichever was interested and able to ice a team)
Hull Stingrays
Edinburgh Capitals

South:
Basingstoke Bison
Bracknell Bees
Guildford Flames
Slough Jets
Romford Raiders
Milton Keynes Lightening
Swindon Wildcats
Peterborough Phantoms

The schedule would run as thus:

2x home, 2x Away against teams in own conference (28 games), 1x home, 1x away against the other conference teams (16 games) for a total of 44 league matches (10 fewer than currently), plus 3x home, 3x away cup games, based on groups of 4 drawn at random from within own conference (6 games). Winners of each cup group progress to a 2 legged semifinal against winners of the other group in each conference (ie North Group 1 winners play north group 2 winners), and the winners of this move on to a 2 legged final.

Playoffs are top 4 from each conference, playing 2 legged conference semis. Winners of the conference semis go to finals weekend where they play 1 game for conference title, then conference winners play in Grand Final to determine play off champions.

I think that looks, and sounds pretty damn good, but undoubtedly it will piss some folks off (Too many/few games, too many teams, etc).

Thoughts people?