Monday 28 January 2013

Thaw for War

Hello hello hello, apologies for the elongated hiatus, and let me wish you all a very belated happy new year. So I don't now if anyone has noticed but it has been a bit cold recently. So cold that most hockey and training has been called off leaving us all out in the proverbial cold, instead of out in the actual cold. The knock on effect has been for me to ice the blog until there was enough happenings to report on. Lucky for you that point has now been reached.

Let's bring you all up to speed then with how the new year has panned out so far for us. Of the game the 1's have played, we won 3-0, a pretty average display by all standards but given that it was against the Brooklands you've got to be happy, the fact they had 9 men stopped it from being a classic but it was good exercise at least (even if two frozen training sessions have negated that since!). It was supposed to be the start of our run of games where we play all of the teams around us, a sequence of games for which the term 'must-win' has been bandied about rather a lot. There are two ways to interpret what our challenge is over the remaining 9 games of the season. There is the high intensity, win or death approach to every game that we have had; being off the pace we must take 27 more points (AKA maximum) to even have a hope of being in the mix at the end of the year, any failure and we're done and dusted, welcome to the Alamo etc.

The other route is one of composure and clarity of vision. Going out with all guns blazing and fire raging is all well and good but how different should that be from normal? Aren't all games must win? I've never known our team to go out on the pitch not looking to try and win the game, so really should anything change? Well, yes and no. We should always be turning up to win and show our quality, the only thing that changes is we now NEED rather than want to turn up with our guns loaded and ready for any kind of shootout. No half measures, no lethargy; because there are no more chances, no more favours to be done for us, we can make a real good go of trying to get up there but we have to go and get it. I hope we can think of it like that really annoying berroca advert from a while back and steal their catchphrase: 'Sale hockey... but on a really good day!' (I can hear the groans from here for that one).

So having missed out on playing top of the league and the team beneath us in the frozen games the 1's face another derby at the weekend and hopefully all the ice will be gone and battle can re-commence. Meanwhile, I personally managed to get a game in last Saturday having dropped down to the 2's last week, a serendipitous dropping then as I actually got to play. The bad part was having to go back to Colwyn Bay again, which you may remember from my photo blog effort from a few months back. Things are still looking grim out in the Bay, although a grey snowed in Manchester was the far grimmer of the two places this week. I also played the entire game in midfield and managed not to ruin the whole game, which was a surpirse! I even scored the winner, and indeed the ONLY goal for Sale HC last weekend, another fine addition to the George Sterlini gallery of rubbish things to brag about. For anyone wondering how good a goal it was... well if you've ever seen me score before... it was essentially like that. It was a tough match all in all and the rustiness was on show from all, hopefully mother nature can stop shafting us though and allow us to get some training in and start enjoy our weekends again.

Song of the week

With the lack of action due to cold weather and the cold hearted attitude the 1's require in order to achieve what they have to in order to keep the hopes of promotion alive, this week I had to go for a song that will please our very own Ice Cold striker Lewis. This weeks song of the week is MOP- Cold as Ice

Warning, contains naughty grown up words.


That's all for this time folks, sorry if it's a bit brief and you were hoping for more action after such a long break, I'll soon get back into the swing of things as we start playing again, so I'll see you next time, thanks for reading.

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