January 21st – Slough Jets Programme

It’s 5.45am, Tuesday morning and I’m excited about the start of the Pakistan vs England test match series, hoping the world’s best test team can continue my recent sporting success by adding to the Jets four point weekend with a good start to this three match series.

Welcome to the Hangar for tonight’s local derby against the Bracknell Bees, and our bring a friend free with the family promotion. We’ve done a couple of “Kids for A Quid” game this year so far and tonight we’re trying something different to try and generate some new fans for the Jets.

Coming off the back of a 4 point weekend with a massive 11-2 win against Telford and then an outstanding 3-4 victory against the league leading Guildford Flames it would be nice to get a good turnout for our local derby tonight against our rivals from 18 miles away.

Bracknell were one of the talked about teams in the latter half of the summer and Gareth Cox has produced a much more competitive team this year than the Bees have produced of late. The import quota this year is much better than in previous seasons with Masa and Smital replacing Pinc and Cesky and the Brits are also up in standard too. The Bees look to be locked in a battle now with Peteborough for the 8th spot which any team at this stage of the season who has it will be looking to hold on. The Phantoms, 3 points behind with a game in hand are chasing down the Bees so our opponents from next weekend will be happy if we come away with the points tonight.

So the 11-2 result last weekend then and what a good way to get back to form for the Jets. I saw some people writing after the game that that scoreline should never have been created but what to do. A view from a first time fan last weekend was that the game was great which is good. In truth a competitive game will always be more entertaining than a blow out but once you realise early on that you don’t have a competitive game it’s important to not only win the game but provide the best entertainment that you can to the supporters who have paid to watch, either on the night or through their season ticket.

It’s fair to say that the Jets didn’t carry 100% intensity in their offence all through the game as if they had there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t have been 20-1. The first two periods were about winning the game and full intensity and the third was about sharing out ice time responsibility and trying different combinations.

To anyone that says the score was run up I’d say what else were the Jets to do?

So it’s down to the local derby action tonight so let’s be loud and proud

My team, your team, OUR TEAM

Mark

PS – With England now 4 down I’m not quite so excited about the cricket but I’m sure England will battle back into this series