October 22nd – Slough Jets Programme

Hi and welcome to another game here at the Hangar. Tonight we welcome our neighbours from Surrey as we line up against the Guildford Flames for the first time this season.

It’s the start of the half term holidays, tough to believe the first six weeks of the Autumn/Winter term have passed by already. With it being half term from Monday don’t forget there’s still time to register for the Jets first hockey camp of the season. Doug’s taking charge and will be assisted by some of the Slough Jets and they’ll be teaching everyone who registers not only how to improve their on-ice game but off-ice techniques to help improve their game. It’s open to players from any club, the only requirement being that all players taking part have full kit.

Last week I interviewed Ryan for Jets TV which hopefully you’ll all have seen now. Took a bit of persuading but I’d like to thank Ryan for taking the time to record the interview with me. You’ll have noticed as well by now that we have the new head shots of the players which are on the website. After recording the interview with Ryan before training I hung around for the photoshoot after training with Lewis and this year we’ve done something different. The photos were all taken with the players on the ice after a training session and are as close to action shots as we could safely get with a photographer on the ice without any protective kit and with an expensive camera in hand.

Going back to the interview with Ryan, I’d appreciate your feedback on whether player interviews are something you’d like to see continued? And if so which players would you like to see interviewed? Shep is a real good guy to work with and I’m sure he’ll support us with Jets TV to enable us to record more of these interviews in the future if this is something you’d like to see in addition to the game highlights on the channel.

Tonight I’m expecting to be edge of the seat hockey as games usually are between the two teams. We know from past experience that the Flames fans are loud behind their team so I’m hopeful the Jets fans will be at least equally as loud. It seems all the loud Jets’ fans are in either blocks B or C these days and block D is a bit like the quiet carriage on the train! I remember a time looking back that you could barely move in block G behind the home bench but times have changed and it seems behind the team bench is no longer the hot seat but it would be so nice to have some noisy fans dotted around the rink so each block can hold their own and so the noise for the team can emanate from all of the home 7 of the total 9 blocks.

Anyway, down to business and let’s enjoy the game tonight.

My team, your team, OUR TEAM

Mark