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Yeah but there’s a big difference between those teams, and a team which it takes ~$30K to put together for the season, which gets put forward as a prem team in our sport. No one’s going to keep doing that for ever, and we’re not just talking about the players.
It was another rough season for the team, everyone’s aware of that. They showed signs of how they could play – competitively – and signs of how they shouldn’t.
I should note, Stampede and Thunder do get together pre-season. That’s part of the point of the open grade moving to pre-season.
Man that’s a big question. There’s going to be some end-of-season meetings and looking ahead to next year.
On my list of things (off the top of my head):
1. Long term coaching plan. It’s very noticeable that there is no consistent plan in some areas of the Thunder’s play year to year. Which is what happens when you get in new coaches. Having one coach, or one agreed upon coaching system for the medium term would allow players to build on what they learnt last year this year and look ahead into the future. It’d also enable the lower levels of the club to coach players towards Thunder’s requirements.
2. DIHA-Thunder relationship. We’ve let this slide from both ends. I’m developing a model in my head whereby Thunder supports club activities (coaching etc), and the club pushes more people into supporting Thunder off-ice – merchandising, promotions etc.
3. Sub-Thunder grade. Dunedin doesn’t have a premiere grade for players who are either unable to commit to the NZIHL, or who aren’t at the right level. We’ll be looking at a pre-NZIHL season Prem grade to try and push those players to get better. We need a pool of 50 players to choose from when it comes to Thunder, not 25 – 30.
(Admirals lost the final in the first season Aaron)
People could of course post them here as well as sending them to the nzihf. They can be instantly posted on slapshot.net.nz in the appropriate thread.
Well, I’m not an English Lit grad, so obviously I had to do the best I could with my limited abilities.
Ironically the invitation arose out of a comment I made on another forum about two Auckland high school rugby teams going at each other and the fans on the sideline having an all-in brawl.
Which is just a way of explaining that I can shoehorn just about anything into an opportunity to promote ice hockey.
Umm. “Promote this weekend to a general audience”. I took liberal license and talked it up a lot. It’s how I write.
"Ryan":2gynrhy9 wrote:Does anyone know if there is a backup plan if insufficient players sign up for each grade? I think there were only four teams in the Autumn season, so if the number of players don’t double then there would be no competition if there isn’t a backup plan.
[/quote:2gynrhy9]The structure will hold to have 2 or three teams in a grade. Two teams is easy, obviously. Three teams – because the DIHL is run on two different nights it would be a shorter competition, but two games a week, so some weeks you’d play two games.
I got invited to write a guest column for sportsfreak.co.nz, a sporting website, which is now up:
http://www.sportsfreak.co.nz/show-column.asp?ID=706
I may also be appearing on Kiwi FM’s Saturday morning sports show.
"kelf6966":3ezmndyl wrote:Surely it would make more sense to have the Auckland ref’s in Queenstown this weekend and the Cant’s in Auckland – In saying that not sure which option is worse.
[/quote:3ezmndyl]You can probably get a referee down from Auckland as long as one is available. We got Peter Haxell down for our last home games last year. But the host team has to pay for their travel.
We have plenty of qualified referees in Dunedin, the trick is getting them over the hurdles of doing their first games and then managing them up to being confident enough to be regulars.
At the higher level there’s a problem with top level contact games in that we really need supervision from top referees to get feedback on what we’re doing, and we have no senior referees in Dunedin.
Ok well its two games for starters.
I think one will be a tie, IBs will take the other one. This is largely the same IB team that came together well at the world champs, and they’re playing a couple of sydney teams mashed together. A full strength Aussie team would be different.
If the IBs are within a goal at the beginning of the third I think they’ll win the game, they always finished strong at world champs as their work in the first two periods paid back. Parry to get a start.
"vpatrol":3oo5ndja wrote:The questioning of the refs and foul language is pretty similar in all sports. I can hear the f-bomb while watching footy on Sky. Is it necessary? No. But its not going to change. A lot of the profanity was coming from the crowd to be honest. Many complaints about that since there were kids present.
[/quote:3oo5ndja]The line “it’s not going to change” floats around lots of behaviour issues in sports. Things change once administrators, coaches, officials all refuse to accept it.
Currently there is no uniform response to abuse of officials, particularly from coaches. Once players start missing games because they’ve been abusing officials their attitude to it might change.
Thunder up 4-3 going in the third, having got the first goal of the game (shorthanded). Let it slip in the latter stages of the game, and Parry, having done some head-standing for the first two periods to keep them in the game, couldn’t keep it up all game.
More physical game this time around, some good hitting and played at a better pace.
