Tap, tap… Is this thing on?

Hello? Hellooooo? Here perhaps you could visualise me yawning and stretching, as I uncurl myself from my summer-shaped box and climb carefully back out into the world of British ice hockey.

And it’s a strangely barren world I find myself in. I’m used to football pre-season. It is, as a rule, very dull; the comings and goings of the transfer market serve to punctuate the brief but persistent void where football once was, providing some talking points in the absence of any real news. The announcement of the new season’s fixtures comes and goes in a flurry of non-news; if there was actual sport going on no-one would give a care as to the arresting discovery that Blackburn are away to newly promoted Swansea on the third weekend in November. But without the real thing on tap, it’s something to talk about. Tennis helps, when it’s on. As does athletics, and cricket. For the rest of the time, thumbs are twiddled, holidays partaken of, tabloid headlines featuring Premiership footballers gasped at, and life just generally got on with, safe in the knowledge that the continuation of life as a supporter of your particular team will continue in just two short months.

This is my first off-season as an ice hockey fan. And it’s already been found wanting. Wanting, most significantly, of a team. In my 20-odd years as a football supporter I’ve never experienced an aching void quite like this and I hope I never will. Not only is the season over – a fact which in itself I could cope with without too much of a problem – it IS summer, after all, and somehow gathering in a chilly ice rink when it’s 23 degrees outside seems as though it might be a bit odd – but I am now without a place in the world of the sport I love. It feels a bit like going back to former place of work to say hello to old colleagues, but when you walk into the office, it’s full of people you’ve never seen before. There’s that awkward moment of feeling as though, in your head at least, you still belong in this place. But nothing to cling onto to back up that notion. I’m metaphorically homeless. A bit of a pisser, as I was totally up to date with my mortgage repayments, I swears it, guv’nor.

So there’s no transfer news for us marooned Vipers fans, and no speculating over fixtures, or jerseys, or rinks, or owners. There’s just… Nothing. But defiance reigns among the faithful. We DO still belong here! We WON’T go quietly! And okay, we may not have a team THIS season. But we’ll be back in the future. Maybe. And in the meantime, the rest of you are just going to have to put up with us! Cue the impending arrival of the Viper Nomads in YOUR ice rink. A band of merry travellers intent on keeping the memory of the Vipers alive, visiting the homes of the other Elite League clubs in order to get their fix of top level hockey. It’s a temporary measure. And it will have to do. But you can be damn sure we will have fun in the process.

Well, what else am I supposed to fill the void with?

The whole thing has been just another surreal turn in the rollercoaster journey I’ve been strapped into since my first day as an ice hockey fan. And it got me thinking about the nature of being a fan. How do you choose a team when you start to follow a new sport? In adulthood at least, it can only be an arbitrary process, in stark contrast for example with the meaningful team-selections of childhood, which are less of a choice and more of an organic acceptance of the preferences of those most influential in your life, like a form of osmosis.

With football for me, for example, my selection was never in doubt. My football team is as inbred in me as my larger than average feet and my freakish ability to independently wiggle my ears. I was cheering for Watford before I even had the vaguest concept of what it meant. All I knew was, there were some men on a patch of grass, and a ball, and sometimes it made my Dad very happy. This consequently made me very happy. Therefore, Watford (or as I knew them back in those days, ‘youworns’) were good. As I grew into them they became embedded in my psyche. The reasons were simple: I lived there. My Dad supported them. They were my first experience of live football. They wore shiny colours and were really nice. I grew up with them, and they are as much a part of me as anything else I have lived with my entire life, like the odd lump on my right ear or my sticky out spine.

With hockey it was a bit different. No. A LOT different. I’d lived in Newcastle for six years and hadn’t shown the slightest inclination to start supporting Newcastle United, or Falcons, or any of the other local sports teams. So it wasn’t really the local connection. I put it down to the first experience thing. A bit like how a duckling will attach itself to the first live creature it sees when it is born, even if that creature happens to be a cat, or a llama. I saw them, and that was it. They imprinted on me, and I became their willing devotee. I could have chosen a team that were actually, well, good. I’d only been supporting them a couple of weeks, couldn’t I just switch allegiances? It’s not like my family supported them, or I had a whole host of friends to go to matches with (because I didn’t originally). And they really were quite poor at that stage. But to use another fitting analogy, it’s like giving birth to an ugly baby. You can gaze longingly at the perfect little angels in the cribs next to your mini Winston Churchill, and wistfully imagine what it would have been like if you had had one of those. But as wrinkly and pug-nosed as your disappointing offspring may be, it’s your disappointing offspring, and you literally couldn’t love them any more if you tried, however hideously disfigured they might be.

So to conclude, either the Vipers were my children, or they were my mother. I became quite concerned at that point as to the nature of that particular train of thought, as, I believe, would Freud have been were he to have psychoanalysed me at that point in time. But I digress.

I hope you’ve understood the general thrust of the slightly disturbing extended metaphor, and that it makes plain my current plight: WHO am I going to support next season? Because I couldn’t watch a sport with impassionate objectivity. It’s not in my nature. Is it in anyone’s?! I HAVE to support SOMEONE, in EVERYTHING. I can’t watch a football match, or a 100m race, or even archery in the Olympics, without backing someone. In international sports it often defaults to the British person. But not solely: in sport like tennis or athletics, I support the person who is passionate, wears their heart on their sleeve, or is just an all-round good egg. I champion passion, dedication and guts above all else – how can you fail to love a person or team who gives it their all? It’s the reason why last season’s Vipers team were just so perfect to me in the end, despite their apparent lack of quality when stacking up against the big guns (and it’s why I loathe the England football team in their current incarnation, aside from any patriotism, with all their preening, whining, philandering amoebic dysentery. But that's another blog post for another time).

So I’ve turned this current problem over in my mind a numerous occasions, and I’ve managed to narrow it down. I’ll leave you on that cliff-hanger and take my leave for now. But don’t go far – I’ll be back next week with my team-by-team season previews. It will be TOTALLY informative and thought-provoking. As if it would be anything else! Until next time, my pretties. Over and out!