Round the Rinks, October 9th: Dust, Straw, and Feathers

"Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers."
Lord Byron.

He may have been mad, bad and dangerous to know, but it seems that Byron, in between writing some quite-good love poetry and future exam fodder for Eng.Lit students everywhere and/or fornicating with everything in sight, could have pretty much summed up every hockey season, or at least the period between August and November. Crazy things happen as teams are settling in for the season proper after the opening skirmishes...and it is usually, come the end of the season, of little consequence. However, that doesn't mean it isn't interesting...look:

Tell your statistics to shut up. Or at least whisper-you're scaring the Coventry fans: A stat for you: as of today, the top scorer in the league, Nottingham's Jade Galbraith, has scored 20 points. This is one more than the Blaze top line of Derek Campbell, Dan Carlson and Adam Calder combined.

No, really. Please shut up: Not only that, but the much-vaunted "best offensive pairing in the league" of Carlson and Calder have four goals between them in the same time. Looking down the league, we see names you might expect who have scored more than ACDC combined, proving that at least offensive trends are the same: Colin Shields, Galbraith, Sean McAslan, Mike Berry, Wes Jarvis...

Hold on a second...

Yup, the massive Cardiff defenseman, not exactly known for scoring goals or...well, a soft touch around the opposition's net, has seven already.

I will now light myself on fire. Or, as they say in teen-flicks nowadays...."ooooh, snap!"

Well, no-one can say he's indecisive: Hull have signed a new player this week-James Sanford joins from the ECHL to shore up the blue-line, showing that Sylvain Cloutier is not afraid to make changes, or at least threaten them, early on...

I appreciate that things on here, at least post-number wise, currently have about the same expectation-reality relationship as Ed Courtenay's view of the EPL at the moment (I am told by my Manchester friends that he's not exactly looking overjoyed to be in Manchester, nor over-exerting himself in the effort to tear the EPL apart)...at the moment I'm having something of a AC/DC-esque slump in numbers post-wise thanks to not having Internet time at work and busy evenings...however, I hope this will change as the slump ends shortly. Work is being done behind the scenes. Honest.

Now for the weekend preview-I have noticed the comments but I'm going to answer them in a post I've got in the works-particularly the one from Yotes regarding Molin...


So, first the double-headers:

Edinburgh v Newcastle (Newcastle home leg at Whitley Bay): This could be fun. Two teams who are already raising eyebrows meet (almost)-home-and-away. The Vipers get their first outing in the "character-filled" (read "old") North East hockey temple of Hillheads Rink in Whitley Bay, and the Caps get a chance to avenge their defeat at Hockeyfest, while at the same time get their own season up to the same speed as everyone else's now the Gardiner Cup's out of the way...

Belfast v Cardiff: The Belfast leg of this pair will be live on GiantsTV, and it's an intriguing weekend as we have two teams for whom the word "inconsistent" would be a compliment-both their engines are turning over, but not at all running sweetly like that of Nottingham and Newcastle's. They will both be hoping that this weekend is the hockey equivalent of a jump-start-both teams need to find themselves some rhythm-it's only thanks to the greater struggles of others that they currently find themselves third and fourth...

The rest of the weekend sees a Rubik's Cube of fixtures, as Sheffield play Coventry while Nottingham play Hull on Saturday, before the two away teams return home and switch opponents for the Sunday.

There's all sorts of storylines here...not least the meeting on Saturday between two teams who are under-achieving quite spectacularly so far this season...who'd have thought a Sheffield-Coventry game would see fifth playing sixth, even this early on?

Then, of course, there's the ever-growing rivalry of Blaze-Panthers on Sunday (and these games are getting nastier and nastier over time) with the Yorkshire Derby as the supporting act...if the Stingrays win that one, there could be muttering growing ever louder in South Yorkshire.

Blaze-Panthers, meanwhile, is nothing short of a legalised, localised, bloodless war now-there is genuine hatred amongst Blaze fans for their East Midlands rivals-a feeling which is, at least while the two teams are in action against each other, seemingly reciprocated. Buckle up for this one, folks...this weekend could get controversial in a hurry...

There's your weekend preview...