November 6th – Slough Jets Programme

Welcome to the Hangar for the first game of November, the month which for some becomes “Movember”. Last weekend was PINK IN THE RINK and through admissions, Chuck The Duck entry and donations I hope we raised a tidy sum for breast cancer awareness. Cancer sadly is an awful disease and across the country people will be growing facial hair this month while raising money for prostrate cancer so if you get approached to sponsor someone please do so if you can afford to.

Going into this game the Jets head on in on the back of a six game winning streak and speaking of winning streaks it’s congratulations to Block B who collected the noisiest block accolade again last week. One box of doughnuts and one box of home made cakes now consumed by Block B over the last couple of weeks but pleasing once again that there was competition. Block C were pretty good last weekend as well and having the scouts filling up block F also added some competition from our side of the rink.

Someone asked me how I made the choice last weekend for the noisiest block so let me explain what we look for on the stage when making the decision. We’re looking for the block which makes the most noise consistently through the first 40 minutes of the game when the competition is decided. The block making the highest decibels last week would probably have been Block F but since this only happened when I asked for noise and the competition is the noisiest block in the opinion of all of us on the stage Block B made the most consistent noise throughout the entire game.

Last week’s game came to a dramatic close after two pretty mediocre periods allowed Swindon to post a lead I felt was beyond their abilities. What then followed is one of the best comebacks I’ve seen in a long time as the Jets roared back into the game, blowing aside the opponents to end regulation time at 5-5. What followed was a fantastic period of overtime where I found myself querying one very strange decision made by Aldridge. Firstly, bad move to pick up a too many imports penalty but then to send the import who has scored all but one of your goals for the night to serve it staggers belief.

If I was in charge of the league we’d have been calling it a day at 65 minutes with a point each but fortunately I’m not as the Jets then went on to claim the extra point after penalties. A few people did leave after the first couple of periods and I’m sure as they checked the result later they perhaps were kicking themselves.

This weekend it’s all about the Steeldogs as there’s no game tomorrow to worry about. That means everyone can give 100% tonight and no-one has to worry about conserving something in the tank for tomorrow. Hopefully that means the Steeldogs will be heading back up the motorway with their tails between their legs but most importantly let’s hope for a good game of hockey.

Keep it loud once again.

My team, your team, OUR TEAM

Mark