Away Day To Blackburn - A Fans View.

Around 10 fans travelled on the team bus to Blackburn for the game against the Hawks. We all met around 1pm and with the café/bar being shut in the Ice Bowl there was no chance of light refreshments before we embarked on ourjourney. The bus left the Ice Bowl just after 1.30pm and with the first corner there were drums flying of the storage compartments above our heads and luckily the drums missed everybody so no one was hurt.

The weather for the journey was a rather dull and dreich but the good news so far was that the toilet on the bus worked. The bus made scheduled pit stops at the Gretna Gateway Village and McDonalds in Carlisle to pick up more of the Sharks players. Two of the supporters on the bus were female and we did get slightly worried that they might be coming down with the flue or a bad cold as they had blankets over there legs and there glasses were full of Ribeena which is full of vitamin C.

The bus had been quiet for the first part of the journey but once past Killington Lake Services a couple of the players thought they would try for a little team mate bonding, the boxer shorts wedgie fight had started between Alan Crane and Matt Seddon with I think overall Crane getting the better of Seddon and then Matt doing a Borrat impression with his boxers.

After arriving in Blackburn safely around 4.30pm we all depart of the bus with the team going straight into the ice rink to get ready for the game and the supporters moved of for something to eat with the more sophisticated of the supporters going to Frankie and Bennies while the riff-raff ended up in Burger King.

We tried to enter Blackburn Ice Arena at 5pm to be told we couldn’t get in until 5.20pm for a 5.45pm face off. Entry prices to the game were Adult £5, Child under 16 £2.50 and a Family ticket £13.50, a friendly welcome was given by the person taking the ticket money and the programme seller as well as the people at the merchandising stand where there was a wide range of hockey souvenirs from Hawks badges, car stickers, scarf’s etc as well as NHL stuff, also a friendly welcome from the bar staff and the Hawks support.

There was a nice entry on to the ice for the Sharks as “Scotland the Brave” was played for them coming onto the ice with bagpipes and all (pre recorded). I did bump into a couple of people I knew from the old days of going to Blackburn and it was nice to see that a couple of the Sharks kids were playing with Hawks youngsters. I felt the sounds system in Blackburn was good but the acoustics because of the building were not very good and made it hard at times to make out the announcements.

The game finished 3-3 and, although it was a Northern League game, there was no overtime allowed due to a scheduled public skating session. This gave the Sharks an overtime win by default on the Hawks part, which in my opinion was not a fitting end to what was a good end to end game of hockey. I also felt that the ref could have let the game flow more and some of his decisions were terrible. The Hawks fans were saying that they have to put up with this every week and he was one of the better ref’s.

So it was back on the bus to head home, the bus was quiet on the way back and I feel that was because of the way we got the overtime win by default. We arrived home at 11.45pm and I think a good trip was had by all in general and I’m looking forward to going back down in March as its another Saturday night away game for the Sharks.

IceDJ