started with a visit to Belfast on Saturday.
3am rise for the coach from Xscape at 5.30 am. Eventually left at 6.00am but time was made up easily and got the ferry at 8.30am as planned.
Only complaint about the coach was the fact the heating could not be switched off which meant things were distinctly uncomfortable for large parts of the journey.
The three hour ferry journey passed quickly, mainly down to the energy of the 89 of us who were there and the funny banter with a great bunch of peeps!!
On arrival in the port at 11.30am, we headed straight to Rockies bar, part of the main complex and literally just yards from the Odyssey Arena.
Brian McJ duly distributed our tickets and we hit the Guinness. Why is it thicker and creamier than the stuff we get? Hmmmmmm.....
Couple of pints in Rockies and a group of us hit the city centre. Absolutely gorgeous architecture! We ahd great intentions of exploring further but......a rather splendid pub caught our attention and...yeah we succumbed lol. Got welcomed to Belfast very warmly by all who asked who were in the city to see and really made to feel at home. :)
We then explored a wee bit more and decided to hit what looked a pub the locals would frequent and were not disappointed. (The name will come to me one day...) Great to watch people having good craich and enjoying themselves and we enjoyed it too!!!
Back to Rockies for 5pm, a few more sherbets and wait for Face Off time.
Rockies Bar, incidentally, is a sports fans Mecca!!!!!! Wall to wall and ceiling to floor, it's covered in sports memorabilia and you'll need to find me on facebook if you want to see all the pics ;)
Matchtime.
Fabulous arena and very friendly staff and fans! 4000 Giants fans and say, 100 clan fans. Bar when Giants scored, who could you hear? Clan Fans!!!!
This, bar the fact we lost, was the biggest disappointment of the weekend. I expected an electric atmosphere in the arena but it was more akin to a morgue. No singing or chanting, Giants fans simply sat and waited for a goal, cheered, taunted (that's ok lol) and then sat down in silence once more. There was one section with a drum(s) at the far end, but even they looked demoralised at the silence due to the lack of crowd involvement. Kinda like being at an Old Firm match here I suppose.
Final score was Giants 5-2 Clan. The scoreline reflected not great play by Giants but more a quite inept performance by the Clan and we really need to look at how we can play like we did 1st period v Panthers and then as badly as we did v Giants.
Did that dampen our spirits?? Not a jot!!!!!!!! We chanted "Richardson's Purple Army" for the last 3 minutes continuously and even got recognition from the Giants fans for that!
An hour to "waste" in Rockies before heading for another remarkably calm (and merry) ferry crossing to Stranraer and the coach home for 5.30am. Sleeeeep.
Sunday's match at the Braehead Arena was delayed by 90+ mins due to (allegedly) delays with travel down to Stennalink but don't quote me on that lol.
A small Giants contingent contributed to a great 1605 attendance which was very noisy. Made me wonder if people actually had taken on board what was being said about responding to chants and keeping them going because the atmosphere was fab :) Keep that up Clan fans!!!!!!!
The match.
Ho hum, it was like watching a rerun of the previous night's game, right down to fact it looked like Clan's PPs were actually Giants PPs. The result was Clan 1-2 Giants.
OHHHHH and just for those of you who think we scored at the end? We didn't!!! I was right behind the goal and when he hooter sounded I got to my feet to find people protesting. I was looking at the goal line and the puck had not crossed the line, in fact I didn't even see the puck.........sooooooooooooo.........no goal!!!!!
All in all it was a fantastic weekend (forget the score) I met a bunch of fantastic people, made new friends and had an absolute ball, albeit a 24 hour no sleep ball!!
If you can't make the away games....go to the home games!!!!!!! It's the best game you can name, it's the good ole hockey game!!!!!!
Al
No comments:
Post a Comment