Phew, that's over then

The morning after the night before. Or more accurately, the month after the month before. Or something.

Haven't readjusted to normality yet, as we've had some tidying up to do. I finished off the much delayed junior website, then ended up taking some pictures of the Aardvarx's first training session in the Ice Dome, with Guest Coach Derek Campbell.

(Richard was a total puck bunny, and had a grin as wide as the English Channel all night.)

As Richard mentioned, none of the crew assignments have been decided for next season. It is by no means a done deal that we'll be back. I'm not going to go into much detail, but suffice to say that a few times things have got a bit tense, dealing with unavoidables like scoreboard failures is part of the job. But dealing with avoidables shouldn't be, and a number of occasions the three of us have had to bite our tongues as getting frustrated and angry is no condition to have to go into running a show.

In hindsight, there isn't much I would have changed from the way I did the gig. I'd probably still make the same mistakes and learn from them - as long as you don't do it again, then all is fine. There is no manual of how to do the job, you just do what you feel is right.

We had a lot of advantages - Fishcake, Rev and myself know each other well and there was no meshing of personalities required. Each of us has to implicitly trust the other. We know the game, we know the demands on the players and we know how to balance that against the demands of the club - sponsors, presentations and the like. A different crew, more experienced in presenting a show might have put more pressure on the players to do their bit - there is a time to back off from the guys and sometimes a time to back off on the presentation as well.

The playoff game was a good example - no need to exhort to make noise, as the fans did it for us. They couldn't make more noise and all encouragement would have done is pissed people off. The fans were awesome over the last few games, and overwhelmingly loud, positive. Bodes well.

Like I said, next season is no certainty. There would have to be a couple of fundamental changes in the way things are organised in the run up to a game. Now we are in the Ice Dome, I feel we three have to push ourselves more - it is, after all, our show. We're the ones in the firing line, in front of 1500 people and when someone else outside our small circle screws up - we sometimes get it in the neck.

One thing I know we have to do is stop listening to one or two lone voices. Because one person doesn't like thing X, doesn't mean everybody doesn't like it, or it doesn't work. I don't like cheerleaders, but if cheerleaders work, and the fans want them, then tough, work with it. Same with a mascot. Same with a piece of music.

One of the things that wound me up was complaints about the sound - we would have five people saying it was bad, two of which would say "too loud" and two of which would say "too quiet" and the last one saying "not clear enough". It wasn't easy and we did have problems, but sometimes I think we shot ourselves in the foot a bit by trying to constantly micromanage anything thrown our way.

To end on a positive note. We may be able to finally do some of the things we want to do. We can inject personality into things. Richard might finally be able to do the video stuff he wants to do, the two clips so far have had a fantastic reaction. (Quote from Brett Clouthier, waiting to go onto the ice and watching the intro vid: "Awesome!")

But the next few weeks might be a bit bumpy.

It is a bigger mistake to never do something, rather than to take a chance and fail.

I am immensely proud of the job we did, am proud to be associated with the people who did it. And I wouldn't have missed it for the world.