Blogs

BLOG: Chalmers – Onwards & Upwards

November 20, 2019

NEXT HOME GAME: We are supporting Pancreatic Cancer Scotland at THIS SATURDAY’s home game against the Guildford Flames (7:00pm face-off). Tickets are available NOW online HERE, by calling 0844 499 1700 or direct at the Braehead Arena box office (Thursday 12 noon to 9pm, Friday 12 noon to 5pm and Saturday 10am to face-off).

Hi Purple Army,

I hope everyone is well and enjoying their hockey at the moment, it’s fantastic to see the club at the top of the EIHL standings in November and beating the bigger budget teams on a regular basis. I am sure you will agree the team have been an absolute joy to watch this season, certainly some of the most entertaining hockey I’ve witnessed since joining the Clan – long may it continue!

Credit to Fitzy and the all the guys, they’re certainly turning heads around the league. After the progression under Pete last season, I wanted to make sure we didn’t stall and continued to progress. We set out early on building from where we had finished last season, we wanted a certain brand of hockey, one that would be entertaining every single night – the guys are certainly delivering that right now.

Credit must also go to the staff, volunteers and the OSC – it’s a team game and the reason we are where we are is because we’ve pulled together, worked hard and focused on where we wanted to be.

We came off a very difficult period for the club two season’s ago, we assessed, we, learnt, we planned, we restructured, we made changes and right now we’re progressing as we’d hoped – it’s going to be exciting to see where we end up at!

The support from the Purple Army as ever has been fantastic this season, attendances have been strong, the buzz has remained from last season and is building week on week. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it time after time, the atmosphere at our home games is the best in the country – period! MASSIVE credit to all the Clan fans, as this certainly makes Braehead an intimidating place for opposition teams to come to.

As many of you will already have seen, I have taken the decision to move the Cardiff game from Tuesday 17th December to Wednesday 25th March. The reason for this, is after we added the Challenge Cup ¼ Final against Dundee into our December schedule, it left us with 12 games in total and 7 home games – which would have been too many.

We were also short on home dates during March due to varying factors, so to the benefit of the team and the club it was the right decision to make the change. The schedule is already very tough losing the Arena for the whole of September, so little changes to make it a little smoother for the team will always be the right choice.

As you’ll have seen here on the website and our social channels, we will be supporting Pancreatic Cancer Scotland this Saturday v the Guildford Flames. We’ll be wearing special edition PCS jerseys which will be auctioned off following the game and there will be a PCS bucket collection in the Arena foyer, please dig deep – anything you can afford would be appreciated for such a worthy cause.

This has all come about following the tragic loss of Andy Bonar in May. Like many of you, Andy was a good friend, we regularly talked about the old days of the Ayr Bruins and Durham Wasps, we’d talk about the Clan (good and bad), he was an honest, highly likeable and an absolute gentleman – he was taken from Tracy, his family and all of us far too young. Andy this weekend is for you mate!

It was very sad to hear about the passing of former Ayr Scottish Eagles owner, Bill Barr, last week. I appreciate some people will love him and some people will loathe him for varying reason’s, however I strongly believe Bill deserves a lot of respect for bringing top flight hockey back to the West of Scotland. You could even question whether the Clan would be around today, if the foundations in Ayr hadn’t been set 15 years earlier by Bill.

Bill was a major driving force behind the creation of Ice Hockey Superleague, along with Sir John Hall (the then owner of the Newcastle United & Newcastle Cobras) and was the catalyst behind probably the best team I’ve ever seen play domestically in the UK – the 1997/98 Ayr Scottish Eagles. Our thoughts are with Bill’s family and friends at this sad time.

Finally, it was fantastic to see Kevin McCoskrie return to the mic after his heart attack. Kevin is a really good friend of mine, someone who has a lot of experience in West of Scotland hockey and has been a big help to me since joining the Clan. It was a big shock to us all when he became ill at the Belfast game and ultimately had the news confirmed that he’d had a heart attack – however it’s great to see him healthy and back where he belongs!