Midweek Musings: On Hockey and Sports Adultery

"But if it wasn't for you, We wouldn't have all these multiple crowds.
How am I supposed to choose, which one I belong to?"
I Set My Friends on Fire: "Things That Rhyme With Orange"

I have something of a problem at the moment. I'm contemplating one of the (supposedly) most unforgivable sins in sports fandom, which is supporting two sports teams, playing the same sport, in the same country. Perhaps my only saving grace is that they're not in the same league.

You may have noticed, reading back over the past two seasons (yes, there must be one of you out there who's followed it that long-believe it or not the Breakaway is now into its third full season) that I have something of a soft-spot for the Manchester Phoenix. This is partly due to the fact that the Breakaway is good friends with several Manchester blogs, not least Five Minute Major, and partly due to the fact that, as I've written several times, the Phoenix seem like the ideal template for running a hockey club, and partly because...well, I just like them.

Obviously, with Manchester and Coventry both being in the same league, there is no way up until now that I could have been a fan of both, and Coventry won for fairly obvious reasons...but now, unless you've been under a rock for the past few months, you'll have noticed that the Phoenix have moved to the EPL. And signed a former Blaze player, none other than Andre Payette, while the Blaze have signed ex-Phoenix Luke Fulghum (personally, I reckon we in Coventry got by far the better end of the deal, but there we are)...

And so, as of now, I'm declaring myself openly...coming out, if you will.

My teams in Britain are Coventry Blaze and, as of now, officially at least, Manchester Phoenix. And thus, expect to see a bit more EPL content, or at least links to it, on here as I keep an eye on them from afar...

A perfect season was never an option, but to fail at the first weekend just smacks of carelessness: In other news, I have to apologise to the whole of Wales. Especially the portion of South Wales that watches hockey.

After Monday's post I received a very polite email from Gareth Jenkins, a regular reader and Devils fan who, after saying some very nice things about the blog in general (which I won't reproduce here as modesty forbids, but thank him for), points out that I made several errors in both Friday's and Monday's posts...not least completely forgetting that Cardiff was in Wales.

The full list of errors I'd somehow managed to make and now will correct are:

a) Getting the day wrong of Newcastle's 5-4 win against Cardiff (this occurred on Sunday, not Saturday)
b) Completely omitting any mention in either Round the Rinks or Double Overtime of Cardiff facing Newcastle at the Big Blue Tent on Saturday night (a game which, by the way, the Devils won 4-3 on penalties, so you'd have thought it was a pretty difficult game to miss)

and finally, in possibly the only EIHL error more horrific this weekend then Kevin St.Pierre letting in a goal from the opposite blue against Coventry, in the Sky game...

c) I said that Matej Kralj had scored against every "English" team he ever played against (the word should, of course, have been "British" or, avoiding offending national pride at all, "from the EIHL".

Many thanks to Gareth for not immediately organising a Welsh lynch-mob in order to come raging up to Coventry and show me the error of my ways (in fairness, it would have probably been deserved if he had done), but instead very nicely and calmly pointing out that I'd relocated the Welsh capital on the other side of the Severn Estuary as well as completely ignored the opening game of one of the Blaze's biggest rivals in my preview...I apologise to the Devils and their crowd and shall attempt to avoid making such amateur errors in future...:)

And that, short but sweet, is your Midweek Musings...