Ice Hockey

Well I have been out of Ice Hockey pretty much since the summit center ice rink closed in Finnieston, probably about 1999 or 2000.  I have had a brief comeback with the Paisley under 21's, at that time the Paisley coaches had problems with players coming from Glasgow, so a lot of the guys just sat on benches or never got picked for games.

Fast forward to last Christmas, was on a night out in Paisley and met a guy that was in the under 14's with me at Paisley.  Says they still play recreational hockey on a Wednesday night and should pop along.  That I did, when I got there spoke to the coach who said "yeah bring your stuff and come on".  There lies the problem, my Dad decided to fling some of my gear out, shorts and kitbag to name.

With buying a house, and doing it up I decided not to pursue my hockey career any further.  Then one day I was browsing eBay and I thought I would see how much kit bag and shorts would cost.  Turns out there was a shorts in my size unused for a very good price.  Kitbag was second hand but does the job.

With these now in my possession the hunt for a club was now on, I had a look on the web and found that the Paisley Ice Rink had closed to be resurfaced and fixed, great!  All that effort to getting my gear back was wasted, as most of the teams had moved to Kilmarnock and I could not be bothered training at 10pm on a school night.

On digging a bit further it was mentioned that Paisley would be moving to Breahead as their new home.  This was due to paisley ice rink putting plastic ice down. Now I have been here before when the summit center closed Glasgow was to move here, so I took this information with a pinch of salt.

With the confirmation of Paisley moving to Breahead at the start of February 2007, I started to dig looking for teams.  I came across the Paisley Panthers website (watch out for the bad music) only one out of 4 teams that have a working website.  Keeping an eye on this website it was announced that they would be training at 7.30 every Saturday morning.  An excellent time for me, I am up most days early taking Michele to the bus station, so getting up at 6.30 on a Saturday is not really an effort.

Now having been of the ice for so long, I had fears of being really crap when I did go back on the ice.  Turns out I can still skate, shoot and pass a puck.

After the session I was asked if I wanted to sign for the club, which I may as well do, seemed like a nice bunch of guys to train with and play a few games with.