The Official British Hockey Thread 2012-2013

[MWE]

Flooded the rink with tears I think

[philou21]

Hahaha

[batdad]

Flooded the rink with tears I think

Rink? Don't you mean grass field?

[MWE]

I only ever played field hockey on astroturf

[batdad]

LOL...of course you did. Skirt still fit?

[MWE]

Yeah of course it does I've been going to weight watchers ever since I can remember

[batdad]

Lol. I prefer Jenny Craig myself. And she could play in England on a top line with Sestito.

[MWE]

Sestito

[archibalduk]

The playoffs start tomorrow. Is anybody going to any of the games?

[MWE]

No time no money

[archibalduk]

Yeah I'm struggling a bit on the money front too. I can't wait to start earning again!

Having said that, hockey is my one vice. So tomorrow I'll be at Slough for the 1st leg against Milton Keynes. Then next weekend it's up to Nottingham for the playoffs weekend (but unfortunately it means I miss the Invicta v Cardiff quarter final). And once that's all over (depending on whether Invicta get through to the semis) I'll have some serious budgeting to do!

[CJ]

How much does a ticket cost to an English hockey game about?! And what capacity are the arenas there? I hope it's cheaper than here in Finland, as it's a much smaller sport there (I asume).

[philou21]

You're so wrong jhcjobpb. Hockey in England is more popular than ever because of Tony Hand it seems.

[archibalduk]

It's not too bad in the UK. I pay student prices at the moment, but I think an adult ticket at Slough (they're in the EPIHL - the second highest league) is about £11 (€13). The EIHL ticket cost me about £55 (€65) for a student ticket - that's really good considering it covers the two semi finals, the runners up game and the final.

Normal adult tickets for the EIHL are usually about £15 (€17.50). It tends to cost me more for the train tickets than the game tickets.

Slough's arena is tiny. The EIHL arenas vary in quality. At the top end there are Nottingham's and Belfast's arenas which are probably NHL quality and have a little under 10,000 seats for hockey games. I think Sheffield's is possibly the largest arena - maybe around 10,000 (I entered the exact figures in FHM, but don't have them to hand right now). IIRC Hull's is the smallest EIHL arena with roughly 3,000 seats.

[archibalduk]

You're so wrong jhcjobpb. Hockey in England is more popular than ever because of Tony Hand it seems.

Well he did receive an honour from the Queen for his services to hockey.

[philou21]

Oh my god you got to be kidding?

[CJ]

Okay! But I asume Football is a bigger sport there, that I can't get wrong right!? Maybe your hockey is like our football here, it's a sport everyone follows, but we don't manage that well compared to others.

PS: Philou, you can call me CJ so you don't have to copy/paste my name.

[philou21]

I wrote it the legit way CJ! Needed to check at least 3 times to be sure it was correct haha

[gazzw87]

Okay! But I asume Football is a bigger sport there, that I can't get wrong right!? Maybe your hockey is like our football here, it's a sport everyone follows, but we don't manage that well compared to others.

PS: Philou, you can call me CJ so you don't have to copy/paste my name.

Football is the main sport and it's because of that no other sports get any coverage really. England is pretty much a one sport country. Despite the fact we are decent at mant other sports! Not many people follow hockey no, the total attendance for the EIHL league was around 500k per year a few season back, I imagine its grown alittle bit now

[archibalduk]

Yeah we're mostly a football, rugby and cricket nation - and the ticket prices reflect that!

[Tasku]

In Finland ice hockey gets about double the audiences football games get. It's still not very high, simply because most teams come from relatively small towns, where getting 5000 attendance means 5-10 % of the whole population. Jokerit gets the most, about 8000 per game, but there's two teams in Helsinki. Same with Tampere, another town we in Finland call "a big city" (200 000 residents), also with two SM-liiga teams.

What kind of averages do EIHL teams get?

[archibalduk]

The top three averaged around 3,900 - 4,200 this season. The bottom three averaged under 1,000 or thereabouts. The remaining four averaged around 2,000 or thereabouts. Not really all that high - certainly no way near 5-10% of the local population!

Up until a couple of years back, Manchester Storm held the record for the largest attendance for a hockey game in Europe when 17,245 attended a game in 1997. Nothing in the UK has really matched that since (other than when the Kings played the Ducks a few years ago in London).

[Tasku]

Those numbers aren't so bad. The top teams -- measuring only by their average attendances -- could play in SM-liiga, or atleast Mestis. I guess where they are lacking is skill level of local players, because foreigners from Canada or other European countries will always want a bigger paycheck than locally raised talent.

[archibalduk]

I guess where they are lacking is skill level of local players, because foreigners from Canada or other European countries will always want a bigger paycheck than locally raised talent.

That's exactly right. The EIHL is probably comparable to Norway, Denmark and France in terms of skill. However, if you take all of the foreigners in the UK out of the comparison, the EIHL wouldn't be comparable at all. Denmark/Norway/France have much stronger local talent - hence their national teams are much better than Team Great Britain.

Interestingly, the top British players typically earn more than the foreigners. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps because top UK players are relatively rare - and because once each team has filled their quota of foreigners (11 foreigners per team at the moment), how you fill the remainder of your roster is pretty crucial. Other than the top British players, there is a big gap between the foreigners and the rest of the British players. Hence the stronger teams do well because they take many of the top British players (and therefore have good roster depth) whereas the very weakest teams have to fill their rosters with British players who spend much of their time in the lower leagues.

[Tasku]

That is a strange anomaly, indeed. Usually the core is domestic and foreigners get payed more to lure them in, so to say.