A Call To Arms...

"This is a call to arms
Gather, soldiers...
Time to go to war...
This is a battle song
Brothers and sisters
Time...to go...to war..."
30 Seconds to Mars: "Vox Populi"

Hello, everyone. Is anyone still out there?

Yes, I know it's been three months. I know that you probably thought the Breakaway had died. And I apologise. It's been a rough few months for me what with losing my job and various other events in the real world, which have meant hockey (or at least writing about it in the style you've come to know and love) has been the furthest thing from my mind.

But now it's playoff time. Now the season is reaching its business end. And, like the first signs of spring, it's time for a new era on the Breakaway, too. It's back.

And to celebrate this new era, I will be making my debut appearance on hockey-related radio this weekend, too, as I'm off up to Manchester to take in some EPL hockey between the Phoenix and the Sheffield Scimitars. All being well, I'll be on the Phoenix Podcast (which you can access through the Phoenix website) talking about all things hockey-related...and also something which I'll be doing for Sport Relief.

What? You want me to tell you now?

OK. I have been silent for three months, after all. You need to get the buzz back. So here we go...

I'm condemning myself to Blaze fan hell for the rest of the season.

For the rest of the regular season (i.e for tonight's game against Sheffield Scims, Saturday in Manchester, and the remaining three home games against Sheffield, Edinburgh and Belfast, I will not be sporting any Blaze colours. Oh no. I shall be wearing (shudder) a Nottingham Panthers jersey.

You read that right. A PANTHERS JERSEY!

The very thought of this makes me throw up in my mouth. After all, anyone who knows the slightest bit about the Elite League knows that Blaze and Panthers get on about as well as Cheryl and Ashley Cole these days. So I wouldn't be doing this without a bloody good reason.

And here it is. Sport Relief. More specifically, the Shirt of Hurt campaign.

It's summarised here-but simply, it's "wear the shirt of your favourite team's biggest rival:

http://www.sportrelief.com/whats-on/challenges/shirt-of-hurt/donate

Basically, the idea is that I wear the shirt, post pictures on here of me doing so, and people donate to Sport Relief.

You can do so by giving the money online at this page: http://www.mysportrelief.com/breakawayblog...and I can track it through the amount...

The target so far is £500...let's see if we can beat that.

Game on, people...