“Judgment Night”

“Do you hear the thunder
Raging in the sky?”

“Age of Reason” – Black Sabbath

Thinking back to when the fixtures were first released, I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in looking at a January mid-week game against the Flames and expecting a bit of a dull snore-fest in front of a small, quiet crowd.  At the time of writing, it’s almost the third anniversary of a Wednesday night Challenge Cup Quarter Final against the Belfast Giants from the first season.  Apart from having a small (and very quiet) crowd that night, it also sticks in the mind as being the only Storm game since the start of the 2015 regular season where I didn’t have a drum with me (not that it would have made much difference to be honest), but that’s another story

As has become a bit of a “blog cliché”, isn’t it funny how things turn out?

What is amusing is how different things on Wednesday night could have been.  If we’d expected normal numbers at the game, the suggestion to move as many fans as possible over to one side of the rink to make it look as “busy” as possible (a trick also used by Phoenix in their first season at the rink when a game was due to be televised) wouldn’t have come up, it would have been like a normal game night and the now famous “Thunder Block” wouldn’t have come into being

When the idea to fill one side of the rink was proposed, something that threw me completely was the number of fans that upon the suggestion, said that they would “follow the drums”.  As daft as this sounds, it has only been very recently that I’ve realised that I’m no longer another “anonymous face in the crowd”, even if I still feel like and try to behave like one. Obviously, the pony-tail means that I’m quite distinctive and as I’ve mentioned before, as my taste in “fashion” hasn’t changed in the past 20 plus years, I’ve had people say that they remember me from the arena days.  There’s also the fact that bashing hell out of a drum on match nights also makes you a bit of a centre of attention (things that sound simple in hindsight but I’ve never really thought about).  To say that I’m struggling to get to grips with being some type of (very) minor rink “celebrity” (for want of a much better expression) or influence would be a huge understatement.  That was almost certainly never the intention when answering an old forum post back in the day, asking if “anyone was playing drums” in the upcoming first season back which is how I’ve come to be in this position in the first place

So, on to the Guildford game.  After my last visit to “the other side of the rink”, I started to research into looking where there could potentially be a second set of drummers (should we manage to “recruit” any, although looking at social media, that looks like a possibility) for my long proposed ideas for making the rink and atmosphere a louder experience.  As long-term readers and people that know me will know (I think I may have mentioned it on a few occasions) , a minor frustration I have is the wasted potential of having a small rink and not making the most of it.  The inspiration and ultimate dream is to try and create as close as we can to a German DEL atmosphere (I know, never going to happen but as the saying goes, “It is better to aim high and miss than to aim low and hit”) or at least what Cardiff achieved at the old “Big Blue Tent”.  For instance, there are stories of away teams in the locker room hearing the noise of the Devils fans stamping their feet and cheering from outside before a game.  Conjures up quite a good mental image doesn’t it?  Or to put it another way,  from a home team perspective, how good would it be to hear that?  Must give you a terrific boost

With that in mind, the thought was that a second noisy block would be great for “call and response” chants, and over the past few weeks, I’d noticed that 106 was usually one of the less populated blocks on any normal game night.  This came in handy when the suggestion was made as it would hopefully save any potential conflict between those that had seats already booked there and those that didn’t.  It also had the advantage of being away from those that I know sit in 105 and don’t really want a bunch of noise makers sitting near them (as much as a large percentage were complimentary about my last visit, I did receive a couple of “complaints”, which is fair enough I guess)

Game night – I swear that I’ve attended Cup Finals and not felt the same pressure.  Here was the opportunity to put into practice something that I’ve been blogging about for two years and posting, writing about and generally hinting at for much longer.  The chance to show that if we can get a number of our more vocal fans together in one place, the effect will be something else.  On the flip side, there was also the fact that it could also go pear shaped…

Needless to say, from my own experience and judging from the responses on social media, I’d say that it was a complete success.  As much as the Flames fans were closer to the microphones, from the bits of the game that I’ve managed to catch (putting a blog post together has been the priority of my limited free time the past couple of days).  Knowing that any chant will get picked up on and carried is a great confidence boost and gives the inspiration for both myself and others to be much more creative.  Getting a “Linden Springer!” chant going after his fight was pretty spectacular for instance.  For others, I guess that singing as part of a group rather than an individual had a similar effect, and it’s always good when you hear others start chants off

The quandary is where do we go from here?  After much deliberation, the decision was made to possibly leave things as they are for the forthcoming game against the Blaze, just to see if Wednesday made any difference in that respect.  Block 113 is where the drums have traditionally been so far and where a number of us have season tickets. From there, I’m all up for a vote.  I’m almost certainly comfortable making a move to 106 permanent if it means a repeat of Wednesday night (even if the PA there is spectacularly awful even by usual rink standards and the view will take a little getting use to – as I mentioned on social media, I’d wear a Steelers shirt on a weekly basis if that’s what it took to get that type of atmosphere going!).  Admittedly, some of us have got used to watching from our own personal part of the rink, so the change in view may take a little getting used to, but we’ve still a number of games to experiment with, trying out different seats and such like, so chances are that those of us that want to sit in a “noisy block” will be able to find somewhere suitable for our requirements

Another thing to bear in mind is that we were down on numbers last Wednesday.  Just think what could be achieved with a normal weekend-sized crowd.  There is also the possibility that things may snowball in respect to those that sit in other areas of the rink – those that may have been a little more self-conscious of singing and joining in may feel a little more confident,  and so on and so forth.  I’ve written many times previously on using atmosphere as a big selling point (it’s certainly something that is referenced to by those that haven’t been before).

As I said at the start of this post, strange to think that all this has come from what should have been a quiet mid-week game…

The only downside I can see is that I’ll have to update my “Storm Drummers/Jack Daniels” blog logo – maybe a good thing that something else worked out better for a banner design after all!

 

 

 

Edited to change “Playoff Quarter Final” to the correct “Challenge Cup Quarter Final – well spotted! 😉 (It’s been a strange few days!)