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?

Sign it!

Keep Streatham Ice Rink open!

Tesco (boo, hiss!) are trying to renage on apromise made to the people of the borough of Streatham to maintain a proviosion of an ice rink during the construction of their new store and replacement ice rink.

Sign the damn petition people! We know what its like to have no ice.

Did we escape just in the nick of time?

The past couple of days has lead me to believe that we escaped from the lunatic asylum that is the EIHL just in the nick of time.

Both Edinburgh and Newcastle have put out press releases intimating that they both need more money, probably pretty sharpish. Scott Neil, the owner of Edinburgh has stated he feels he cannot put anymore money into the club to take it forward, and the Vipers are seemingly not putting enought arses on seats to make ends meet.

The whole situation is begining to resemble the end days of the ISL. If Edinburgh and Newcastle make it to the end of the season (and there are no guarantees they, or indeed any club, will), we will be back in the summer of 2003. The same people will involve themselves in the same petty, ridiculous pissing contests. Fans will be at each others (metaphorical) throats, and the game as a whole will lose out.

It's deja-vu all over again......

Bloody hell, that was close!

Talk about leaving it late. A win in OT, after not one, but two fightbacks from a 2 goal deficit each time. Not good for the old ticker, but tremendous entertainment nontheless.

Sure, there were problems. Take our woeful defending, leaving Fone high and dry, although to be fair he was having a bit of a mare himself. I do admit to begining to harbour some doubts about his ability as a starting nettie, but I shall wait til the season is over before passing any kind of judgement.

I know that at least 7 of the squad were feeling ill, but still...there were some atrocious errors at the back, from simple overcommitment going forward to not covering the channels when back in the zone. Basic errors I hope that Tony is trying to get rid of asap.

There were some positive points too, though. No penalties given up that left us on the PK was one. Given how the D were playing, this was a major relief. Payette getting the 'Fight' monkey off his back, by having a pleasent little tete-a-tete with the Bisons Wiggins. Score it a win to Andre, who did look a little rusty. Tony and Big Ed seem to be improving their link game on game, with some sublime interplay between them, and some moments of truly spectacular brilliance form Tony himself.

The young Brit forwards are looking more an more comfortable as each week passes, and Adam Walker actually looks comfortable now, after struggling for a few weeks. Hagglebeg has finally settles into the pace of the EPL game, and is leading his checks less with his elbows, and more with his shoulder.

The only othe rkajor dissapointment was the crowd turnout. It was visibly down on last weekend, with (at a guess) 700 people in there. What does the club have to do to get people to come/stay? Being at the top of the table and winning more than they are losing doesn't seem to work. Bugger. Back to the drawing board.

And following on from that....

I was going to go to the 'Commercial Board' meeting this week, but on reflection, I am choosing not to. Ther eis a simple reason for this, and it echoes the thoughts of many people I have spoken too about it. It already looks that it is a case of the same people being involved as everything else that is doen for the club. No disrespect to those involved already, but I do knwo that quite a few folks are pissed off at who seems to be in charge of this, and feel that their ideas will be ignored in preference to a supposed 'chosen few'. Maybe that is the bigest problem we face a sa club in motivating the fans. New blood is needed, but feels unable to come forward. And I'd like to see how it pans out after this meeting, and maybe attend later ones once the board remit and make up is fully known.

That is all.

(Only 1 swear word...bollocks, I'm loosing my touch!!!!! Shitshitshitshitshit!....ahh, thats better)

That was satisfying.

So, a Saturday home game. Not something we do too often here in Manchester. Thankfully, we were not in direct competition with our big sporting neighbours down the road, but the RSL Grand Final didn't exactly help with some things (like parking spaces).

Anyways, I digress. The game itself was a full blooded affair, with some cracking end-to-end play on display from both sides. The mighty Phoenix ran out 6-4 victors, but it was a bloody close run thing.

And the game even had a fight, of sorts. Bowie vs Farmer was a bit of a non contest, with 4 punches thrown, before Bowie fell over, with Farmer on top of him... ooo-err! And for once, the ref showed some sense assesing just a 2+2 each for roughing.

And what an improvement from Big Ed. For the first time this season, he actually looke dlike he gave a shit, fighting for the puck, and moving about the ice with some sense of purpose other than 'where's my money?'. A top class show from himself and Mr Hand anchored a fairly solid performance from the boys. The D and Fone will wnat at least a couple of the Scims goals back, but all in all a solid team performance.

Attendance was down on last Sunday, as one would expect for a Saturday game, but it didn't appear to be by much, maybe only 50 or so in it. My guess is that there were about 750ish in the Dome, which isn't too bad at all.

And I would like to apologise for the behaviour of a small number of 'fans' sat in Block 16 who somehow felt it was 'right' to satrt taunting the travelling Scimitar supporters towards the end of the game. It's not big, and not clever... especially when you hoist your kid onto your shoulder and encourage him to do it too. You looked like a bunch of cocks. Grow up.

And thats it. For now.

AAARGH! Some people just piss me off!

I present, for your edification, quite possibly the most annoying, irritating, and stupid 'Official Forum' posting I have read for a very long time (and thats saying something. That place pisses me off on an almost daily basis):

I really do try not to get involved on the forum however I am finding it really difficult to understand the stick some of OUR players and club recieve on this forum

Why not change the forum to

Slag of the players and moan about everything possible to do with the club Forum

Bring back the old video
If you cant say anything nice then dont say anything at all.

o, basically, according to this forumite (who I won't name), we should only use the official forum to be nice abnout the club and kiss its collective and metaphorical arse. Bollocks.

Forums, as another poster stated, are a place for debate and discussion. If people cannot offer any form of criticism, then the forum serves no real point.

In my experience, most fans only criticise their own team if they feel the need to try an make the club improve something, be it presentation, players, whatever. No one ever did anything truly great whilst having someones nose so far up their arse they could smell toothpaste.

Idiots.

That was actually quite boring...

I never thought that winning a game so comprehensively could make for such a boring game.

Romford never even bothered to show up, ustering a pathetic 7 shots on goal during the entire game. So comfortable were we, that after the first period, Adam Summerfield was sent out to play the remaining 40 minutes, although rumour has it that Fone had tweeked himself and was rested as a precaution. Either way, it was good to see Adam out there for a spell.

I did feel sorry for the Romford fans who travelled the not inconsiderable distance to see their team. They were rewarded with a poor display from a team who ran out of ideas after about 30 seconds of the first period. They were piss poor tactically, resorting to dumping the puck on almost every play. They had no answer to Payette, whom they could not handle at all, and could not match the pace of any Phoenix player (with one exception).

And speaking of exceptions, Ed Courtenay was once again incredibly dissapointing. Showingost no desire to even be in the building, he once more failed to do anything of merit bar scoring an easy goal. And even then his 'celebration' was insultingly poor. No passion whatsoever. And when his commitment was questioned on the official Costigan stepped in and basically told people not to criticise him! Bullshit! If we can't criticise the players, whats the point? endless backslapping? Not for underachievers, thank you very much.

But to finish, another 4 point weekend, placing us 2nd in the table behind Milton Keynes.

Poor, poor timing....

2 weeks into the season and the 'walk up' ticket price for adults has been shunted up by £1, making it £13 on the door.

Ouch.

Rather obviously, this has lead to the ineveitable, and understandable, backlash from a section of the fanbase (and a sponsor), with the even more obvious 'you're not a proper fan' comeback from another section. Sigh.

I personally don't agree with the price increase. But I do accept that there may be a very sound reason, or reasons for doing so. Having read NMs impassioned response on the official site, I fear he is engaging in some damage limitation for an action not entirely of his own doing. I believe that our 'illustrious' rink management team have more than a small part in this, and much like the way the club was treated regarding the rink bar, this sticks to high heaven.

I'm sure one day the truth will out, but until then do we really need a return to the petty bullshit of previous seasons?