Each week, our entertainments reporter tries out a new activity. See the latest How to.. This page last updated: Thursday, March 23, 2006 .
How to.. Ice hockey
ALAN, our photographer, had been begging me for ages to do it.
He’s been playing ice hockey with the Peterborough Predators for the last few months, having started as a complete novice.
My protests that the best I can ice-skate is by propelling myself along with my right foot like a skateboarder without a board went to no avail.
And so I found myself sat in a very smelly dressing room, body odour and Deep Heat filling my nostrils, slowly turning myself into a paler, more plastic version of Robocop with the huge amount of kit that ice hockey players have to wear.
Not only is there a big visored helmet and obviously the fairly solid skate boots, you also have a fairly impressive solid pair of shorts, the ubiquitous box, huge shin-pads that go from your ankles to your knees and an American football-style shoulderpad, chest and back protector.
Once I’d got the huge gloves and elbow pads on and strapped myself up with tape I could barely move. I sensed if I had fallen over walking to the ice on the skates I could well have ended up squirming like a tortoise on its back. In total, it took nearly a quarter of an hour to get it all on – and even longer to get it all off again.
The Predators play for an hour every Wednesday night at Planet Ice in Mallard Road, Bretton, between 7pm and 8pm providing there is no big game going on.
But they are not all professional players who have been on the ice for years. Many only strapped on the protective gear for the first time a few months ago.
That said, you really do need to know how to skate to enjoy the sport, as I found out as I struggled like Bambi on the ice.
After brief problems with my borrowed boots, which seemed intent on snapping my ankles in two because they weren’t on quite tight enough, I managed to bat around an ice puck with team captain Paul Dempsey for a few minutes and actually got my other leg moving on the ice.
But I took a seat on the sidelines when the game actually started – the speeds the skaters were moving meant I would have ended up constantly trying to chase the game or avoid being trampled as the players whipped around me.
Paul explained that the team was looking to introduce a minimum skating requirement, especially as for the first time in its history, it was about to play a competitive game, against Milton Keynes Rumble, on Saturday, October 16, from 5.45pm.
He said: “We want to encourage people to come down and have a look, see what we are doing and, if they are interested, try to develop their skating to a certain level.
“It’s not fair on them to put them on the ice and expect them to play otherwise.”
The Predators was started by team manager Matt Withers, Steve Whyte and husband and wife team Simon and Tamsin Jones to create something a little less pressured and more fun for adult ice hockey players. At its last count, the team had up to 50 players on its books – both male and female – of all ages and all
levels of skill.
Although the games that are played at the end of the session aren’t non-contact, they are non-checking, stopping a lot of the sort of body-slamming you see in professional ice hockey.
Each session ended with a drink in the bar, creating a friendly, all-inclusive atmosphere within the team.
And I certainly needed that drink after trying to get all that gear off.