Very good, young padawan. But you still have much to learn.

As Richard blogged, yesterday against Panthers I got a temporary promotion. In that I was Match Night Director, as well as announcing. Which means I had to coordinate the camera crews, liaise with Fishcake over the playouts, plus deal with all the other bits and pieces that happen, added in to the usual stuff over the mic.

To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it all that much, particularly when dealing with the camera crews. I am, quite emphatically, Not A Hardware Guy. I'm lucky if I manage to plug something into the right place two times out of three, so when faced with XLRs, AVs, DV500s and so on, I assume the glazed expression that I've come to recognise when talking about ASP objects, recordsets and DTD's.

So when in doubt, delegate. Steve and Jon have been with us all season, they know the score. Milhouse and Fenton have been with us since the opening of the Dome, a whole week and a bit. But four games worth. So they know what they are doing. And, perhaps, most importantly, I don't, and am stuck in the announcers box so I can't do anything about it, so get the heck out of the way and leave them to it. Just a reminder to change tapes, check the DVDs and so on. They've already bought into the Match Night Crew philosophy, which is if we can't be the best Match Night Crew in the league, we can certainly aim to be the gayest. To whit, such radioed comments as the one I got when I asked for a hotdog the other night - "We'll send you some meat to get your mouth around."

Just as I thought I would only be dealing with the things I already know, a normal game, Neil and Steve told me that we were going to have a blackout, light show and big intro. Or I as called them, a "what?" and "eh?" and a "oh". This may seem like no big deal, just lights, music and so on. But the thing is, all this has to be coordinated with the teams, who have their own pre-match ritual. You can ask, quite nicely, for a team to go on the ice on cue, but you are truly in the lap of the gods whether they actually listen to you. And are you going to try and stand shouting "No! Not yet!" in the way of Wolfie as he strides towards the ice?

Anyway, we worked it all out, and the people involved went along with it all. I managed to remember to say the cues into the headset for the lights and music, and yell the welcomes onto the ice into the microphone. God help me if I get it the wrong way around. The two most frantic times of the game for the crew are the five minutes before the start and the five minutes after the final buzzer - that is when we have to deal with mascots, sponsors, presentations, as well as dragging players out of there game mindset to smile for the cameras - a tough thing especially after a defeat. These are also the times when it seems people pile onto the radio, when the three most focused people in the building are myself, Richard and Fishcake. For those two to three minutes, we simply have to be left to it.

A quick word in praise of the players. What we ask them to do is difficult, emotionally. Either one of them gets dragged out from their focus on the game to smile sweetly for the mascot, or at the end they have to hang around, exhausted and do the same for the prize winners or birthdays when I couldn't blame them for just wanting to get the hell off the ice and into the dressing room especially after a defeat. (It must rub it in as well when the guy you are standing next to is walking away with a couple of hundred quid for winning the 50/50.) In fact, in a couple of instances, a player who has been due to hand out the prizes has been ejected from the game, which sent us into a panic, until said player popped into the announce booth with five minutes left, washed, changed and ready to have his photo taken.

The game itself went well from my POV - instead of Richard calling out the playlist next to him, I arranged with Fishcake that he was in control until I requested a read. Because Fishcake is stuck inside the temporary office, he can't see the near corner for faceoffs, usually Richard acts as his eyes but last night we had Les Heighway in that role. Les usually is one of our runners, is a fully qualified ref of years standing and knows things inside out - if there is query about how players or officials might react, Les will know the answer.

My announcing was poor, again. Combination of nerves, plus concentrating on everything else meant I wasn't paying full attention to my own job. I manage to screw up three reads in a row - most people won't have noticed, but I noticed and I got very mad with myself. I've not been as comfortable with the role at the Ice Dome as I was at Deeside, possibly something to do with being away from the rest of the crew and therefore feeling a tad exposed. It annoys me that with half of the seasons games done, I haven't called it perfectly yet and with the general tiredness and grind of this crazy schedule, I just feel I should be a bit slicker by now.

Must say I wasn't entirely surprised to see Richard in for the third period... though we kicked him out of the temp office for being a member of the public. Wouldn’t mind, but it was a night off, and he still looked stressed out! Maybe winding him up about it wasn’t a good idea…

All in all, I got through it with my sanity intact (baa, wheep, dribble etc.). Did I enjoy it? In the cold light of day, yes, on average. Would I have done things differently? No. Do I want to do it again?

No.

At least, not with the announcing duties as well. It is too much for me to cope with, as my eyes have to be on the game and the crew, plus listening and shifting gears far, far too much to do the announcements properly. Richard can have the Golden Headset back, and I'll quite happily return to being the microphone monkey. I know I can step in, and I know at some point I'll have to, but Richards job is safe.

(Still, no Fishcake on Wednesday. So Richard is on the Golden Headset and the Laptop of Doom! Knowing Fishy, he'll have set the playlist up to simply go "Doggy!" every time Richard clicks on something. Muhahahaha!)