Deep breath.....

EDIT: I stand corrected one one point from below. It was just a 10+Game. This error was caused by myself (and others) misreading the gamesheet. The sentiment remains however. Pering had a shit-fit and over-reacted.


Ok, lets get the good stuff out of the way first:

We won. And there was some damn fine attacking hockey going on from our forward lines, sans Coach Hand. The Brits like McKinney, McKenzie, Duggan, etc are producing some of the finest quality hockey I've seen in a long time, and long  may it continue. I can't criticise the performance last night at all. That was a team who know they are good, and want to play as well as they possibly can.

And it was nice to see a decent sized crowd in there last night, especially for a Saturday night game. The ST voucher books appear to be working too, based on the people passing by Mags at the door.

Now the negative stuff.

Pering. What the fuck was he thinking? First up, the call on Ciaran for clipping. Not in a million years. Someone needs to sit down with Pering and show him the difference between a hip-check (which is what it was) and clipping. Pering muffed the call up badly simply by making the call in the first place. Which would have been enough to piss me off royally as it was.

Then his follow up.... Oh dear. Mr Pering must be a sensitive little soul. Big Robb Schnabel has a word (rather angrily I concede) and is assessed a 10+ Game AND a match penalty for Abuse of an Official. What the fuck? Whilst I have no issues with a 10 min misconduct being assessed (as is often the norm), giving a Game and a Match as well is a total over-reaction of the highest magnitude. It was a stupid fucking call in the first place on Long, which clearly incensed Schnabel, and rather than deal with his continued anger after the Phantoms scored as a result of the PP, Pering had a shit-fit and turfed him. To say I uttered a few choice words to myself is an understatement.

It really fucks me off when refs seem to want to be seen as 'tough' on things like misconducts as it often means they over-react to things which a simple 10 minute trip to the box will nip in the bud. Especially given the tone of the game to that point (the only other call was an obvious too many men call against the Phoenix bench), it wasn't as if he had been dealing with narky, pissed off players all evening.

I never though a ref would annoy me more than Suchz did at the play offs in April but I have been proven wrong already. Pering may show promise (which is why he has been brought up from reffing ENIHL games), but is out of his depth currently, making basic errors, and if he is indeed to continue as a ref at our barn (which according to Tambo he is), then he needs to be paired with a more experienced official who came assist him.

And I'm going to stop now before this just becomes a 4 letter word rant. Fuck, Fuckity Fuck, Fuck!