Skysports.com's hockey guru Neil Chiplen reflects on a trip to the North East in his latest blog.
Skysports.com's hockey guru Neil Chiplen reflects on a trip to the North East in his latest blog.
"Do you sell programmes?" I asked, as I handed over my money for a ticket.
"No, we stopped doing them a while ago," came the reply.
After spending Saturday night at Whitley Bay Ice Rink watching the Newcastle Vipers, I understood why.
I paid the £13.50 walk-up and climbed the set of stairs leading to the green seating, taking a moment to look out over the ice and think to myself: "You know this actually doesn't look too bad." I imagined the end of the rink opposite the overhang packed with fans and figured it would be a solid venue with a cracking atmosphere for a regular game of hockey in the EIHL.
From the descriptions some coaches and players have given it, I was prepared for the worst, but from my seat at centre ice, there were no complaints. It was a little gloomy, a step back in time, but coming from London without a local Elite League team to cheer on, I'll take whatever I can get. Just happy to be here. Whitley Bay's a throwback to the good old days. It's a sawdust-on-the-floor cheap motel for a few punch-drunk Canadians to roll around in for a couple of hours before they get back on the bus and hit the next town. That's the positive spin, but for the purist, the old school hockey fan, Whitley Bay's even a thing of beauty.
Cosy little bars at one end of the arena, a tuck shop downstairs for hot dogs, chips and the usual and hot drinks served by youngsters happy enough to take your order and happy enough to volunteer their Saturday night in exchange for an ice cream from mum and dad. It is a little tattered but give me a cup of coffee and a hockey game and I'm all yours. The journey to the rink involves a long trek out of Newcastle town centre, especially when the Metro is delayed thirty minutes. In fact, it's more of a pilgrimage to a hockey temple and nowadays there are only a few true believers. The rest of the crowd on a Saturday night in Newcastle are too busy draining Bigg Market of alcohol or reflecting on the afternoon's football result to realise that there's another ninth-placed team in town besides the Magpies.
Hypnotised
Only until you get within touching distance of the rink do you actually realise that there is a hockey game on, or that a team even exists. There are no other cities hosting Elite League teams that have to contend with such an all-consuming entity as Newcastle United Football Club. Nowhere else in the country does football appear to be as important to the locals as it is in the North East.
In Newcastle, St James' Park blocks out the sun. It dwarfs all around it. The rugby Falcons, basketball Eagles and hockey Vipers somehow eke out an existence once they're able to creep out of the shade in another part of town, but it's a constant struggle to attract attention in an area that's hypnotised by Black and White stripes on one side of the river and magnetized by Black Cats on the other.
Whitley Bay is a tough sell for your casual fan. It's not the night out and all round entertainment package that the Metro Radio Arena has been. Even if there is a gritty hometown team or the promise of an AHL or NHL calibre player on a visiting roster, it's a difficult one to market. Through one pair of eyes the rink could be a trip back in time to the good old days when Mike Babcock was learning his trade there. To the uneducated visitor, Whitley Bay could be a rusting old tin.
After I left my seat to step through the bar, I noticed a sign on the gent's toilets saying: "Wet Floor". I just hoped it was water. Through the door beyond that, there was an empty cafe that looked like it had died 20 years ago. It was filled with multi-coloured tiles, half empty bottles of pop and steel appliances containing only the memories of chips and hot oil.
The ice is bad. The boards are unpredictable. But I knew that before I walked in the door. Every player and coach knows that before they walk through the door; it's up to each team to deal with it as best they can, without complaining to their local newspaper afterwards.
The blue lines aren't even blue. They're like one of those colour scheme sheets you get in B&Q, showing blue at one end of the spectrum, white at the other and every shade of pale-blue and off-white mixed in between. I'm sure that somewhere beneath the snow there was a constant stretch of blue paint, but all you can see from the stands is a fuzzy line. How the linesmen determine whether or not to signal offside is pure guesswork. A player's skate edge could be hugging the blue line, but to the naked eye you could never tell.
As the blueline fades to white it merges with the boards, which are perhaps even whiter. I already knew it from watching games online or on the highlights show, but the absence of sponsors' logos on the boards and face-off circles that aren't filled with colour is weird nonetheless.
If you focus on the two thirds of the rink away from the end with the gray panels jutting out above the net, the venue is actually very easy on the eye. Apart from the thin yellow bars on one side the sightlines are decent and there's a clear view of most of the ice. Packed to the rafters, the Whitley Bay Ice Rink would make one seriously intimidating venue. This season, however, for much of the Elite League it's been only mildly irritating.
Earlier in the campaign, Danny Stewart's Vipers have taken on his personality. Feisty, tenacious and never say die; Bodies in the crease, sticks in the lane and never backing down. Unfortunately, those qualities can only carry a team so far. Like Stewart has often punched above his weight as a player, wading into scraps against enforcers twice his size, the Vipers have taken their share of beatings, but they've kept coming back. On Saturday night, they gave 55 minutes of 100 per cent effort. As for the final 5? They're only human, right? The Rzeszutko-Prpich-Hartmanis line was as dangerous an offensive force as I've seen this season. All three players should find a home in the league next year, regardless of the colour jersey they'll be wearing. There's a drop off after that, naturally, but the second and third liners are willing to do the dirty work. Stewart himself played hard, too hard in fact. He gritted his teeth and surged forward, demonstrating to his squad that he was willing to practice what he preached, but too often the final pass was misdirected.
Miracles
The fans cheering on the Vipers are the lifers. There was nobody sipping Chardonnay in the sponsors' area, chatting away about their next financial venture, spending more time looking at their phone than the game and asking for an explanation of icing. The fans in Whitley Bay represent the bare bones of every Elite League team in the country. It felt like everyone who had a jersey had a signature on it. Take away the victories, take away the sponsorship deals, take away the state of the art arena, take away the AHL imports and these are the fans that you'll have left in every town. They're the hardcore. The last remaining light of British ice hockey. When all hope is gone, they'll muster the troops to somehow keep this game alive. The rink was packed full of Paul Thompsons, David Simmses and their female equivalents. People who will be there until the end.
And the end for the Vipers as an Elite League franchise must be near.
The lights are ready to go out in Whitley Bay and when they come back on the Vipers should be playing the Phoenix, Bison and Flames not the Devils, Clan and Blaze. Unless the league is completely overhauled, there's no point pretending that they'll ever be able to compete over a 54 game season in Whitley Bay. Like Edinburgh, Newcastle belong in the division below until the playing field has been levelled out. The ninth and tenth places on the league table aren't sustainable right now. The Vipers management and people behind the scenes have achieved miracles, making wine out of water every Saturday night, but the tap's about to run dry. There's plenty to admire about their never-say-die attitude, shared by players, fans and staff alike, and their willingness to endure, but there's been a sense of inevitability about the Vipers this season. It's tough to compete in a football-dominated market like Newcastle and it's tough to compete against the big arena teams of the EIHL. When the rink is further out of the town centre in Whitley Bay it's even harder.
In the shadow of St James' park, the Vipers managed to have their moment in the sun, but the eclipse is looming.
