Yesterday I found myself in Nottingham for the Nottingham Panthers versus the Cardiff Devils. That's ice hockey by the way. Probably because I am still bitter about the fact that they didn't show nearly enough ice hockey on terrestrial tv during the Winter Olympics so clearly I am trying to make up for it now.

My brother and I made our way to Nottingham Ice Arena. And when I say Ice Arena, I mean it's just Nottingham Arena but with ice. Now, I've been to Nottingham a couple of times before. Once was a drunken trip to the cinema complete with shots, sitting on bars and Cat losing any memory of the second half. The other, well, the other put me off anyone who shops at FarmFoods forever. It left half the ND close to pnemonia and erm, resulted in us getting kicked out of the Arena. Later Corinne told anyone listening to national Radio FiveLive that it was because we didn't have a ticket. This is true. But the whole story that goes with it is so much funnier than just saying, "we didn't have a ticket." Even if Cat was pissed off for about two minutes. Anyway I digress. I was back at the Arena.

When we'd found our seats we realised we were about three rows from the ice. Something which I thought was quite cool until my brother pointed out that the risk of us getting hit by the puck, a la Friends, was greater from where we were sat.


Tis true. We settled in to watch them prepare the ice, and then the teams emerged. And at that point I realised I was about three seats-ish away from the Devils bench. A fact I decided would lead to me analysing if there were indeed any hot Welsh ice hockey players. Ice hockey is split into three periods of twenty minutes each and they went by so fast; I was transfixed trying to keep my eye on the puck flying round the ice. There were a few incidents where the puck flew into the glass of our stand, one actually hitting the glass diagonally [and two rows down] from where we were sitting. There were also a couple of fights, one which was quite amusing and resulted in pads flying over the ice and obviously, two penalties.

Nottingham Panthers played well, especially Evan Lindsay who made some fantastic saves to ensure they beat the Devils 4-2. At the start of the match I decided I would start supporting the Panthers because as much as I love Cardiff, well Nottingham is closer. They went into the match second in the league with Cardiff third, but this win and the fact that Belfast Giants [who had been top] lost means that now Nottingham are top of the league. Up the Panthers!*


Brief Match Report


*Also, up the Reds...just don't mention Bolton.