Anyone who talks about ice hockey will eventually start talking about the places that you watch it. We’ve all got places that we love or hate to watch ice hockey and a million different reasons why. They affect how you watch ice hockey and shape your memories. They give them a background, a context but more than any of those things they almost become your home. I’ll explain what I mean but I have to say something first.
Writing this almost feels like a love letter. I don’t think I can talk about the Nottingham Ice Stadium for any period of time without eulogising about it. Back in 2005 I stood on a corner in Newcastle with a Geordie who pointed at two buildings in the distance and said: “there’s my two churches – Tyne Brewery and St James Park”. I knew what he meant. The Ice Stadium was my church and I went there to worship every week. I loved that place, it became a home away from home to me. We had our seats and they were OURS. I doubt many other, if any, people sat there from that first game in the 1981-82 season when we got our first block booking tickets there right through until that last game on 22nd March 2000. In all the time we watched hockey in that building I can only remember one concert – Billy Ray Cyrus, a man more famous now for being Miley and, thanks to a genius piece of casting, Hannah Montana’s father than a country and western singer in his own right. It’s different now, the NIC has concerts most weeks and I don’t feel I have the same connection to my seat as I did back in the old place. I share it too often with too many people, people who don’t have the connection I do with that building.
The NIS hasn’t existed since 2000. It was knocked down to make room for the National Ice Centre that was built to replace it. The ice pad was more or less where the Olympic Rink is now, the steps up to the entrance and the open area between the steps and the Nottingham Legend (called the Castle back in those days) was the car park, raised up above the level of Upper Parliament Street. There’s no sign that it was ever there now. All traces of the Stadium’s existence were removed (along with a number of human skeletons found under the car park) during the building of the NIC.
They’re not completely gone, though, as they live on in the memories of those who went there week in week out. It might have been knocked down in 2000 but I can still remember the place so vividly. You walked in the front doors into the foyer, skate shop on your right and the ticket windows on your left. If you were lucky enough to get a Block Booking (the 1980s version of a season ticket) then you had to queue at those windows during one of the intervals. I shudder to think how much game time my Dad missed queueing up for next week’s tickets. If you weren’t lucky enough to have a block booking then you had to queue outside to before the doors for this week’s game opened to get tickets for the next. I did that a few times as well when I left my usual seat in block 10 (or 2 in the season they changed the numbering round for some reason to go and sit in block one with my then girlfriend and fiancé (they were one and the same person, I’ve just realised how that read!). I was lucky that the queues were never that long and I was always stood somewhere at the front of the building (although I’ve got a memory of queueing around the car park, I have no idea why or what the game was). There were times when the queue would be around the corner and onto Barker Gate stretching up towards Hockley along a road that no longer exists, replaced by parts of the new foyer and the blocks of seating at that end of the arena rink.
As you entered the building you were hit by a smell that I can still conjure up in my memory even to this day. If you walk into the NIC now all you can smell is nothing much really. There’s the smell of the burger concessions as you walk past or the terrible smell of fish if you’re unlucky enough to be sitting on the same side of the rink as the fish and chip concession but that’s it. It wasn’t like that at the NIS. As you walked in you were hit with a smell that simultaneously combined wetness, rubber matting, coldness and smoke that never went away wherever you were in the building. The component smells might have jostled for control depending on where you were (the bars always smelled smokier and the area by the Zamboni always smelt cold and wet) but all those parts were always there. That’s what rinks smelt like in those days. It’s rare that find somewhere these days that even has part of that aroma. There’s obviously no smoking in buildings now but it’s still an assault on the senses when you get even part of it. I walked into Dundee Ice Arena earlier this year and that had that smell. As I walked in the door it and it hit my nostrils it brought a flood of memories back.
Once you were in the foyer you had to climb the steps towards ice level and get your tickets checked at the top of them. Once checked you were through into another foyer, an ante-foyer if you will. I’m not really sure what else to call it. There were toilets and skate hire to the left and right and ahead of you another set of doors that led through to what, I think, was always just referred to as the corridor.
Those doors leading onto a corridor don’t sound like much and they certainly didn’t look like much, they were just simple glass paneled doors probably put in the same time as the place was built just before the Second World War but for a boy like me they were the entrance into paradise. Those doors were my wardrobe into Narnia.
I would be very easy to say that they led to some of the greatest things I remember from those years of my childhood but that’s probably over-romanticizing things a little and the rose coloured spectacles are definitely sitting on the bridge of my nose right now but for a narrow, tight corridor with rubber matting in place of a carpet, painted brick walls and a fug of smoke that hung heavily over everything it certainly holds some memories for me.
The doors opened on to the middle of the corridor at the top of the horseshoe shape it made beneath the stands. Before you could turn to the left or right there was the merchandise kiosk set into the wall opposite you. No visit to the NIS was complete without checking out what they had for sale. The Ice Locker in the NIC could learn a lot from that kiosk. There were always plenty of things like pens, pencils, badges etc, exactly the kind of things that kids wanted to spend their money on back in the 80s and 90s. having said that I didn’t spend much money there, I saved my money for the sweet shop just along to the left.
A sweet shop! How many rinks or big arenas have a sweet shop? I’m not talking about a few chocolate bars and a bit of pic ‘n’ mix either? We’re talking the full sweets in jars weighed out into a bag in front of you experience. I lost count years ago of how many quarters of Kola Kubes I bought from that shop. It must be in the hundreds and, thinking about it now, that shop probably paid a big part in the process that’s led to the Type 2 Diabetic you see before you. Beyond that was the café and at that end of the corridor was the Skaters Bar. I didn’t go down there very often though. The sweet shop was usually as far as I got as I needed to go the other way to get my seat.
There was another café on the other (our) side of the rink. The other one wasn’t grand but this was more of a tea bar than a café. It was nothing more than a Formica counter, room to put sugar in your tea or coffee and room to queue. You’ll have got the idea by now that things were different then and you’d be right but while we’re here in the tea bar I’ll share a strange memory with you. Panthers were playing Peterborough and they were coached at the time by a larger than life (which wasn’t that difficult he wasn’t that tall) character called Rocky Saganiuk. It got to the interval and who should be in the queue but Rocky, standing in line like any other customer. He didn’t push to the front, didn’t make a big think of it, he just stood in the queue talking hockey with anyone who wanted to, put up with some wag asking him if he was ordering for the whole team, bought his drink and then left. You wouldn’t see that now. OK, I once saw Dave Whistle in the Castle during warm-up when he was coaching Cardiff but that’s different.
There was another great but shortlived bonus about the tea bar. For a while, back in the very early 80s, they sold the best chocolate coated donuts I had (or probably have) ever tasted. Doug Withenshaw, who was playing for the Panthers at the time was supplementing his income by working at a bakery and one of the things they made were these ring donuts that were half dipped in chocolate. Doug was my first ever favourite player, an idol to that 12 year old boy with his shaggy hair, big moustache and ripped shorts (I’m talking about Doug not me) and maybe those donuts had something to do with that. Doug left after a couple of seasons and the donuts disappeared with him, I’m not sure which I was sadder about.
Sweets and donuts. Ice hockey really hasn’t done much for my health or my teeth has it?
We’ve almost reached our seats now. All we have to do is negotiate past the entrances to the dressing rooms and the assorted people hanging around outside. This area was always a hive of activity. You’d get children waiting with their parents to catch a glimpse of their heroes up close, the overspill of drinkers from the Players Bar at the end of the corridor, team staff taping sticks or drying gloves. I think it was Cardiff who turned up with a Christmas tree like arrangement of piping that they clotted the gloves over the ends and used a hair dryer to blow hot air in at the bottom but I could be wrong. Then you’d get the players as well. Some were stretching, some sorting bits of their equipment out, some just wanted to get away from their teammates for a few minutes and then, when he played for us, there was Marty Dallman who would finish his warm-up, walk down the steps to the corridor and light up a cigarette. I assume the only reason he walked down the stairs before lighting up was because, by then, smoking wasn’t allowed in the seats.
It seems crazy now, but smoking wasn’t banned in the seats or anywhere else in the building for years. I shudder to think what damage was done to players who came off the ice, breathing heavily from their exertions to gulp down lungfuls of the smoke-filled air. It wasn’t just the fans that smoked. In my time I saw former TV personality Gary Newbon, at the time involved with the Solihull Barons, stood behind their bench in a camel hair coat smoking a huge cigar. I also saw Barry Gage play the best part of 60 minutes for Richmond, return to the bench, sit down and gesture to the stick boy who produced a cigarette packet and a lighter for him.
Our entrance into the seats was up the last set of stairs (I’m not sure disabled access was even considered in the 1930s). At ice level at the top of this particular set of stairs was the grate where Zamboni was emptied after it had swept the ice so if you timed it wrong you could get stuck on the steps, or if you were too close sprayed with ice chippings and cold water, waiting for it to be emptied. Whenever it was there’d be a crowd of kids clustered around the steps above watching the ice get dumped down the drain beneath the floor.
Finally, it feels like it has taken forever, we get to our seats. If that corridor was the gateway to so many memories from my teenage years and beyond (I was an 11 when I was taken to my first game and a 30-year-old father of two by the time the NIS closed) that seat was my viewpoint. In a lot of ways it still is, whenever I think about the old barn I see if from that seat, a few rows from the front right behind the opposition bench. There’s not much in the way of video footage to change how I viewed what I saw from that seat so that’s still how I see it with the home bench away at the other end of the rink to my left, the stage to the right with the old scoreboard still above it.
It was more than my viewpoint though. It was my safe place, my hideaway, my release. This was the place that I could come at the weekend and forget about the stresses and cares of the rest of the week. I didn’t have to worry about exams or homework or work and mortgage payments when I was sat in this seat. For those three hours every week I could leave my problems and trouble behind and focus on the game in front of me. That’s one of the many things watching sport can give you – a release. I’m not saying you should go to games and lose all control, there are still consequences to face, but you can leave the rest of your life when they check your ticket.
All of that still applies. I still feel the stresses and strains of life and I still feel them ebbing away as I watch a game. As they do they get replaced by the stresses of being a Panthers fan but that’s part of being a fan as well. What doesn’t matter in this regard is where you’re watching from. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the NIS, the NIC, the Storm Shelter or Fife’s old rink. The same effect will transport you to a different place, almost to a different timeframe. Real time doesn’t really exist when you’re watching a game. 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock are replaced with game time. It isn’t 7:45, it’s the first interval. Time only returns when the game is over are you dumped back into reality. You could almost be in another world.
There weren’t many places back then like the Nottingham Ice Stadium. Few rinks were built for spectating like it was with its high ceiling and unrestricted views. No pillars blocked your sightline but it was still a struggle to see in the corner at the other end of your side of the rink. Others will disagree but it always seemed to me to be where the best fights broke out. At our end of the ice we had the stage and Eric playing humorous and appropriate music on his organ during breaks in play. Anyone who was there will remember him playing Christmas carols as a bench-clearing brawl broke out or how he got in trouble for playing “Three Blind mice” when the refs came out once. An absolute travesty.
In the days before electronic scoreboards the old analogue clock, it’s face split into three twenty minute periods was hung on the wall at that end. The score was displayed from a hand operated scoreboard above the stage. The more you think about it the more you realise what a different age it really was. The clock was eventually replaced with an electronic one and the stage changed to a small area of terracing for the away fans who’d been seated in block 11 next to us before then. There also used to be a couple of rows of away fans between us and the away bench and that could lead to some serious banter mainly, for some reason, with Durham Wasps’ fans. It was never anything offensive just light-hearted and if that sounds like I’m making excuses it’s not, it just wasn’t that bad. They just seemed to take umbrage with us more than most did.
I don’t know how many games I saw in the old barn. If I watched 20 games a season that makes it somewhere around the 400 mark and I probably watched more than that. That’s a lot of games and I might be still be wearing those rose tinted spectacles but I can still remember that there were a lot of games that were bad, a lot that were forgettable. Even some of the good ones are starting to fade in the mind’s eye. There aren’t many goals that I can still remember. They have to be something extraordinary or at least out of the ordinary to stick in the mind. As time stretches away you seem to end up with a series of highlights, moments when something happened, something different that sticks in the mind. If they were videos they’d make a great introduction to be shown on the big screen, a real mix of hits, fights, even the odd goal but more than anything they were moments:
- Simon Hunt scoring from his own half on Shawn Silver in the Sheffield Steelers net. Silver has since tried to claim that the puck dipped. Not from where I was sitting. It looked to me like he thought it was just going wide.
- Marty Yewchuk spearing Jeff Hoad in the chest from behind and Greg Hadden (who must have been a foot shorter than Yewchuck) jumping in to fight him.
- Marty Dallman cruising back and forth with the puck, the opposition unable to get the puck off him, trying to find a way to penetrate their zone.
- Selmar Odelein destroying Mike Rowe’s hardman reputation in two punches. Rowe hadn’t wanted to fight Odelein but he almost seemed to be goaded into it by his teammates. It wasn’t much of a fight, it was over in two punches. Rowe never really managed to connect anything and Odelein hit him with a punch that floored him and another, un-needed, as Rowe slumped to the floor
- Gavin Fraser scoring a hat trick goal with a signed stick that was second prize in the 50/50 competition because he’d broken the two sticks that he owned.
- Mark Goldby nutmegging Peterborough’s Darren Durdle before stealing around him to score.
- Paul Adey becoming the first Panthers player to get to 1000 points.
- The challenge matches against team from places I’d never heard of.
- The way Robin Andrew would turn and spit on the ice if the discussion he’d had with the referee didn’t go his way.
- Darcy Loewen and Darby Walker throwing punches at each other in a whirlwind of blows in the last season.
- Putting 31 (thirty one) goals past a Southampton side that scored first and last
- The bench clearances against Murrayfield and Ayr
- The current v old Panthers game on February, 14th 1989. Robin Andrew’s shirt from that game was the only game worn shirt I owned for years and it only cost me £15!
- The way Graham Waghorn skated to the penalty box, his straight back like a rod of iron.
- Watching all five Basingstoke players leave Ross Lambert, who had the puck, un-marked to cover Paul Adey on the other wing and Ross Lambert making the most of it.
- Trevor Robins making another seemingly impossible save with that loose, floppy catcher he favoured.
- The eerie, bone-chilling, almost skeletal rattle of the team’s sticks as they fell to the ice in the total silence to mark the death of Gary Rippingale.
I could go on talking about examples for hours, and often do, but you get what I’m saying. There were good times and there were bad. The sound of those sticks hitting the ice is as strong as any other of those listed. A tragedy made worse by the fact that he was so young. Nowadays there’d be a minutes applause not silence and that’s probably better but I don’t think I’ll ever hear anything more poignant at an ice hockey game again. At least, I hope I don’t.
We shouldn’t get confused here. We can’t forget what the place was like. It had a smell all of it’s own, it was smoky, the seats, in the main, were just wooden benches and those that weren’t just meant you had a wooden seat to yourself. By the end it was a tired, old building that had started to be superseded by other venues. It couldn’t accommodate much in the way of corporate sponsors, there was no room for expansion and if the TV came to town a scaffold gantry had to be built over the stands that you could only get to by a ladder in the middle of the crowd. Something Dave Simms once found to his cost when he was accosted by a little old lady as he made his way down.
It definitely had its faults but I’d go back there in a heartbeat. It wasn’t the sweet shop, the smell, or the corridor that made that place so special it was the people. We had as much fun amongst ourselves as we did watching the games. A bad shift or penalty from an opposition player would be pounced on. If we’d scored on the powerplay then the player who had given us the man advantage would be given a rousing ovation as he slunk back across the ice to his bench. We went to those games knowing that we’d laugh, cheer, moan or boo, using those couple of hours to vent our frustrations or delight in what we saw.
When the council announced that they were planning to replace the Ice Stadium with a brand new, state of the art, arena I said it wouldn’t happen. I was adamant that it was just another pie in the sky, vote grabbing idea that would never see the light of day. We’d seen it before and since, they’ve been building a rink in Durham off and on since the old place was turned into a bowling alley and then knocked down, Brighton was supposed to get an arena. Anyone remember what happened to the YES project? No, me neither.Why should we have believed that plans for an arena in Nottingham should be any different?
I couldn’t have been more wrong. The final game took place on the 22nd of March 2000. We lost 2-1 in over time to Newcastle Riverkings which rather spoiled the club’s daft idea of stopping the clock at 59:59 so that the game and, I guess, by association the NIS would never finish. If I’m going to say that the idea of stopping the click was daft, and I still think it was over 18 years later then I have to give the Panthers credit where it’s due and they came up with a couple of great ways. The first thing they did was to let anyone take any souvenirs away from the NIS after that final game. I’ve never seen people turn up to games with power tools before and I doubt I ever will again. People took their seats home, walking out with the planks of wood they’d been sitting on for years under their arms. You still see them from time to time on social media, people showing of the home made bench in the back garden with their old seats at their heart. People took anything they could regardless of whether it was bolted down or not. The signs from the backs of the blocks and the corridors were all gone by the time we left along with the aforementioned benches. I came away with some of the foam that protected players from the edges of the plexi-glass around the penalty box and announcer David “Stef” Lichfield’s goal and penalty notes from the game. I’ve still got them somewhere. They’re the very epitome of an item that only has sentimental value. No one would want that bit of foam and sheet of paper but it’s the only tangible thing I could get at the time. I just wanted something to take away from the game, from that place. It seems crazy that I’ve still got them all this time later but I still remember the feeling of having to have something, anything as a memento.
I don’t think the Panthers have ever surpassed the other thing that did for the fans last night. They let people on to the ice after the game, allowing them to set foot where so many games had gone on before their eyes. It ended up being the most well behaved pitch invasion you’ll ever seen. Fans milled around on the ice with players, taking photos and taking in the fact that this was the last time any of us would be stood in this building. We stood where our heroes had played, where games had been won and lost. This was the place where we had seen so much and spent so much time and it was going to be gone, demolished in a matter of weeks. It didn’t seem right.
Eventually, people started to drift away and I did something that night that I’d never done before – I went for a drink in the bar. One (first and) last drink in a place that had been so much a part of my life. For someone that sees going out for a drink after the game now as a huge part of the match ritual it amazes me that I only ever went in the bar once. I suppose I just didn’t put the two together in those days. After that pint we walked along the corridor, quieter now than I could ever remember seeing it before on a match night. The crowds had headed out the door before us. Before we headed for the exit we climbed the stairs one last time to take a look out over the ice and wallow in the memories, a tear (I’m not ashamed to say) in the corner of my eye. They’d already turned the ice pad off and the ice was just starting to melt. The markings and adverts were starting to blur and streak into the whiteness of the ice, soon to be gone mixed in pools of water to be swept down the grate that we’d watched the Zamboni empty into so many times.
As we stood there, the only people in a place that had seen so many looking out over the puddles I was struck very powerfully by a sense that whatever had made the Ice Stadium so special was gone. The indefinable something that had made that place so magical to me and so many others was gone. Sometime during that pint it had left the building. What had been a place of excitement, elation and misery was now just an empty place of memories. The spirit had moved on. The people, the voices it had fed off were moving on and it had to move on with them. At the time I just thought it would move on with us to the new arena. Only time would tell if I was right or wrong.
I don’t remember when the first game I ever watched at the NIC was but, like my memories of the old stadium that first game comes to me in patches, brief moments in a haze of fading memory. It wasn’t a Panthers game. I do remember my first Panthers game at the NIC, that was against London Knights, I think we lost but I know Jordan Willis (Panthers netminder at the time) had a fight with Mikko Koivunouro. That first game was a juniors game, and free to get in which is why I don’t think we even managed a whole period before heading to the pub. The scoreboard from the old stadium was propped up on a couple of cheap plastic chairs on the stage, a little reminder of where we had come from. The abiding memory, though, is something we still quote to this day. A puck left the ice and flew into the crowd hitting someone who was sat watching. As it did so, someone behind us said in a completely dead pan, matter of fact voice “always cuts”. Even now if the puck goes in to the crowd one of us will say “always cuts”. Not because we have any disregard for the person who got hit by the puck (I’ve been hit by a puck and it doesn’t half come keen, thinking about it though it didn’t cut me) but because it’s become a tradition, something we always do. Another of those daft memories that make the shared experience of watching a game so personal.
I don’t think the NIC will ever feel like home the way the NIS did. I’m quickly reaching the point where I’ll have been watching games at the NIC as long as I did at the NIC but I don’t think it will ever feel the same to me. There’s still that feeling of it being a second home to, it is still the place where I go to try and forget about what is going on outside those four walls but it feels different. I don’t have that same feeling of belonging that I used to, it doesn’t feel like it’s MY place the way it used to. I think if you asked someone who had only ever watched games in the NIC they’d disagree. They’ve got nothing to compare it to, but it goes deeper than that. The feeling of home and belonging has as much to do with it being the crucible of my love for this sport as it does about the place itself. The NIC was where I fell in love with ice hockey. That period when this romance started to blossom is special and where it happened is part of that. People will love the NIC more than I ever can for exactly those reasons but I really can’t see many people who ever went to the Ice Stadium being amongst them.
I think the differences I feel are as much about me as they are the actual building. I’m a lot older than that geeky, nerdy eleven year old who went to his first game back in December 1980 but then again you’d hope I was. I see things in a different way and ice hockey is one of those things. The quality of players we see on the ice now is a million miles away from when I started watching and we’ve seen players pull on the black and gold jersey that I could wax lyrical about for hours. The sniping abilities of David-Alexander Beauregard, Jordan Fox’s solo goal against Sheffield, the huge booming checks of Gui Lepine or the way Craig Kowalski would snap a puck out the air, his glove moving as agilely and quickly as the tongue of any frog catching a fly. They’re all great players and I could name so many more but that’s all they are to me, great players. They’re not heroes like Doug Withenshaw, Dave Graham or Paul Adey were. I was so much younger then, I looked up to them. They were my idols, placed on pedestals and transcended from mere mortals into gods of the ice. When I played with a cricket bat and a tennis ball on our back garden they were the people I pretended to be.
I’m more objective now. Some might even say cynical but they’d be wrong. I might come across as cynical but I still start every season with the same kind of enthusiasm I did all those years ago. The intensity has waned a little over the years but the hope hasn’t. There’s always a part of me that thinks it will be our year and I still feel the bitter disappointment as that hope fades over the course of the season. If I didn’t have that hope I wouldn’t keep coming back.
There are differences between the building, of course there are. One had a cramped, dark tunnel for a concourse and one has a cramped, lighter concourse. We may not like how narrow the concourse feels but if the NIC wasn’t situated where it is then it might not be there at all. That part of Lower Parliament Street marked the edge of a regeneration area that meant that grants were available to help fund the £43 it cost to build. An alternative location on the Boots Island site near Nottingham railway station was considered but that wouldn’t have been eligible for the same regeneration money. There was also a rumour that plans to extend the old stadium were considered but I have no idea how they would have worked and nothing concrete ever saw the light of day.
The congested concourse might cause issues (particularly if you’re stuck behind a load of Braehead fans singing about Brendan Brooks) but part of the NIC’s success at hosting the playoffs comes from it’s location so close to the centre of the city. There are alternative locations for the play-offs (although I wouldn’t consider any of them viable) but none of them have that truly central location (both in the city and country).
There’s one very big difference between the NIC and the NIS and that’s the atmosphere. There were times that the old stadium could feel like a bear pit. I regularly used to come away from games with a sore throat and hands that were red raw from clapping. I could probably blame the throat on the smoke in the corridor and the seats but the clapping? No.
I used to get far more involved in games in those days. I’d get lost in what was happening on the ice. If real time doesn’t exist during any game then what’s happening on the ice can change time as well. Time would go slower or faster depending on the score. A close game meant that those minutes on the clock in the corner ebbed away slowly, every second feeling like a minute. By contrast a game we were winning well seemed to fly by, gone in the blink of an eye. I know time never really changes, a second is a second and a minute is always a minute but that’s how it felt and that was the only thing that mattered. Games where we were losing heavily just seemed to drag but you weren’t counting down the time until the end of the game on those nights, you were just waiting for the chance to leave. I can count the number of Panthers games that I’ve left before the final hooter on one hand but I’ve lost count of the ones where my coat has been on with minutes to go and I’m up and out of my seat on (to paraphrase Linford Christie) “the ‘h’ of hooter”, the resounding silence or boos ringing in my ears as I hurried down the stairs wanting to be free from what I had just witnessed.
The atmosphere is different. You only have to look on social media to see what people think about the noise levels in the NIC. They call it a morgue, a library, dead, if there’s a synonym for quiet they’ve used it. It can be quiet in the NIC there’s no doubting that but at times it can be noisy as well. Look at the games in the CHL last year particularly the one against Zurich. Who ever thought Panthers could get a sell-out crowd on a Wednesday night? The crowd that night was incredible. I know it’s a cliché but if we’d have scored that night the roof would have come off the building. All that proves that there can be an atmosphere in there but why isn’t it there every night?
There’s lots of reasons.
The NIC is a big building, way bigger than the NIS before it. That means that it takes more people to fill it but it also means that the people who are in there and want to make noise are further apart than they used to be. That makes it harder for any chants to get going. You see time and time again people saying that the opposition fans out-sang the home fans. That’s true and it’s for a very simple reason – they’re all together and they want to make some noise. It’s like the robin puffing up it’s bright red chest when it sings to make itself look bigger to any predators.
I’m not the only one who is getting older and as you get older you probably don’t want to be as noisy as you used to. I can only speak for myself but I know I don’t want to be screaming, singing and clapping all game. I might be completely wrong when I say that but I’ve been able to watch the changes in my own two kids as they’ve progressed from happy clappers into more considered fans of the sport. Their support hasn’t wavered, nor has their love of the game but it has changed and deepened over the years that they’ve sat at my side.
Possibly the biggest reason, I think, is one that we probably barely even notice week in, week out. We don’t notice it because as soon as we sit down we don’t see it. I’m talking about your seat. Stick with me but I think comfort has a lot to do with how much noise is made in an ice rink or arena.
Think about that seat that you sit on at games. If you’re a Panthers’ fan you’ve got a fairly comfortable bit of plastic and upholstered cloth to rest your bottom on. You’ll be in a fairly pleasant environment with reasonable access to a wide variety of concessions (even if the fish and chips stand smells disgusting) and the toilets all in a modern, warm, setting with good sightlines and more or less enough leg room.
Now compare that to being an Edinburgh Capitals fan (not the best comparison now they’re no longer part of the EIHL I appreciate but bear with me). Your seat is narrow, wooden and if there was anyone sat in front of you they’d be able to use your knees as ear muffs to keep out the cold. The upholstery has long since given up any attempts at resisting your weight and it sits flat against the wooden seat. If you’re not in the first half a dozen rows you’ll spend the whole game shifting left and right to try and see around the pillars in front of you so it’s a good job you’ve spread out and left a gap next to you.
You have to want to be in Edinburgh’s rink. You have to want to go there and wanting to be there is likely to get you more involved. If you didn’t want to go, if you weren’t that bothered about ice hockey then you wouldn’t go because you wouldn’t want to put up with the cramped, old, cold conditions that you’d have to endure to watch the game. If you want to be there it means you’re more interested in what’s going on and that means that you’re more likely to get involved by making noise and creating an atmosphere.
I think a comfortable seat and surroundings has the opposite effect. How many times, as Panthers fans, have we seen someone wandering up the stairs with a pint in one hand and a ticket they’ve printed at home in the other peering blankly at row letters and block numbers trying to work out where their seat is? When they do sit down they’re more interested in taking selfies of themselves and their friends than what’s happening on the ice. The game isn’t sport to them it’s entertainment. They’re at the game not to be involved in what is happening before them but to be entertained. They’re not that bothered about what is happening out there, it won’t make any difference to them if one team wins or loses as long as they’ve got somewhere to go for a chat and a drink before they hit the clubs.
I could be wrong about this, I’ve only got what I see at my own club and the few away games I attend to base my ideas on, but I’m not sure that’s happening in as much in places like Dundee and Coventry. The fans these clubs are attracting want to be there and support their team more than the people coming to games in Nottingham.
I could be being very harsh about this. Clubs need to attract new fans and some of those beer and A4 ticket-wielding customers could become new fans and clubs do need to keep attracting new fans. The best advert for our sport isn’t on the side of a bus or a tram it’s out there on the ice. I guess that, in the long run, we’re going to have to put up with a third of the crowd at Steelers games not being interested, we’ll have to shift about like lemmings trying to see around the person a couple of rows in front who has decided that the best time to go to the bar or the toilet is just as the home team are attacking. We might not like it but it’s the price we have to pay. We need to understand that they don’t know the etiquette of watching a game. We might have been here for years, they’ve only been here for minutes.
I think I lost something when the old Stadium closed. I think everyone who ever went in their regularly did. We lost a home as much as we did a building. We didn’t go to sit on those uncomfortable benches, we didn’t go for the sweet shop or the smells and sights that surrounded us. We went there because we needed somewhere to belong, to be part of something far greater than our individual selves. For those few hours on a Saturday night we weren’t individuals we were part of a tribe, a gathering maybe calling it a congregation isn’t too much. We were a single living breathing organism housed in that building surrounding what we loved.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I miss that place.
Paul Balm 