BLOG: Talking Clan Towers 14 – with Gareth Chalmers

NEXT HOME GAMES: We have a ‘Frighteningly’ good weekend coming up with the Sheffield Steelers visiting THIS FRIDAY (7:30pm face-off) and the Belfast Giants visiting THIS SATURDAY (7:00pm face-off). Tickets are available NOW via TICKETMASTER, by calling 0844 499 1700 or direct at the Braehead Arena box office.

Hi Purple Army,

I hope everyone is keeping well. It has certainly been another tough and frustrating start to the season. Very much like last season we have found any sort of consistency difficult to come by early on, one week we’re on the road to Nottingham and Edinburgh and come away with two good wins. A week later we go on the long journey to Cardiff and Guildford and come away with two losses.

While we’re not happy with where we are right now, we’re in October with a long way to go in the season with an ownership, management team, staff, coach and players fully committed to bringing success to this organisation. I see John, Richard and Brendan on a daily basis, we have three gentlemen very focused and determined to bring more consistency and certainly don’t like where they’re at currently.

It’s been well documented that there’s been an awful lot of change at the Clan, 16 players have left since the end of last season and 14 new players arriving at the club with a brand new coaching setup – it’s a new team, it’s a new build! For any organisation that’s a massive transition, for this hockey club which has had solid continuity for the past three season’s, it was always going to be very difficult to hit the ground running. We weren’t expecting such a high turnover of imports – some our decision, some not, however it happened and we’ve had to try and be reactive to that.

John is new to the league and it was always going to be a progression season having been in Germany for the past eleven season’s. I see the challenges John, Richard, Brendan and the players face every single day, when you see the hard work, determination, endeavour and professionalism that they’re bringing to the organisation, that’s the starting point of kicking on and a tick for me.

We wanted change and we’ve got that. The day to day aspects of the hockey operations have changed massively from nutrition, to training, to game preparation, to professionalism. It’s what we believed we needed to become better at to build a better hockey club for the future.

Everybody at the club is determined to start climbing the league table, everybody at this hockey club is passionate and focused to get us back on track, from Callum our superb Equipment Assistant all the way up to John and myself.

I appreciate everyone is anxious to find out what is happening with the last import spot. I can assure everyone that we’re working 24/7 to get a deal across the line for the right defenceman. We know we need a quality defenceman, but there isn’t a lot of quality D available right now. As an example there are currently four EIHL clubs in the same boat as us – looking for quality defencemen. We have been pursuing a lot of options for weeks now, but the top quality players we need are waiting for jobs in Germany, Finland, Sweden etc – we’re hoping there will be some movement very soon.

 

Thanks for your continued support!

Gareth Chalmers

Hockey & Operations Director