Finland – Winter Wonderland?

Apukka Resort Igloo, ideal for aurora viewing whilst lying in bed. Unless it is cloudy.

“Let’s not bother with Christmas presents this year.”

“Good idea, why don’t we commit to going on holiday together instead.”

“Where do you fancy going?”

“Finland in the winter.”

“Erm, okay…”

This was a summary of the conversation Elaine and I had with our son, Nicholas, before Christmas. To be honest, we had never thought of going on a winter break to somewhere that has proper winters. Other than the skiing set, not many Brits do. When Nicholas mentioned it we thought why not. It isn’t too far away. It would be a new country to tick off. There are direct flights from Edinburgh. There’s really no excuse not to, is there? Apart from the expense, the lack of suitable winter clothing and maybe the sheer cold but hey, no pain, no gain as some idiots say. As it was Nicholas’s idea we left it to him to come up with an itinerary that fit between the flights we intended to book. This was it: Fly to Helsinki from Edinburgh early morning. Spend the rest of the day finding out what Helsinki had to offer before overnighting in a city hotel. The following day we would fly to Rovaniemi which is situated on the Arctic Circle and part of Lapland, the name given to the northern bits of several already quite northerly countries. We would spend three nights there before flying back to Helsinki and spending a night there before the even earlier morning flight back to Edinburgh. We booked the two Helsinki hotels and for Rovaniemi we splashed out for two nights at the Apukka Resort, some ten kilometres out of town, and one night in an apartment in the town itself. Finnair then threw a spanner in the works by cancelling the outbound flight so we were rebooked on an evening flight the day before and had to book an extra night in Helsinki. It turned out to be a particularly fortuitous spanner as it meant we were well rested before our day in Helsinki.

Finland isn’t a bargain destination. Whilst the hotels in Helsinki were certainly cheaper than, say, London, everything else was a bit on the pricey side. I’ll talk a bit more about this at the end as doing so here might put you off reading the rest of the blog.

Helsinki

The nation’s capital city is situated in the south of the country on the Baltic Sea. South is a relative term of course, it is at a similar latitude to two other Nordic capitals, Oslo and Stockholm, and also the Shetland Islands. It is served by Helsinki Vantaa Airport with the IATA code HEL which amuses the Finns greatly. There certainly were no fires of Hell burning there when we landed at 23:00 on a February Monday evening. It’s a nice airport – they play birdsong in the toilets. It is also well connected with commuter trains taking two different routes to Helsinki Central Station. These take either 28 or 32 minutes so there’s no real hardship if you miss the faster one of the two. It’s about €4.50 for a ticket into town, better value than the Elizabeth Line at Heathrow so a thumbs up from us for that. We were staying at the Scandic Helsinki Central which was next door to the station. We were glad about this as it was well beyond midnight when we got there, -12C and we were dragging suitcases with us as you need to take a lot of stuff to Finland in the winter. The hotel was pretty good, did a decent breakfast and had the only sauna I went in whilst I was in the country that claims to have given sauna to the world. We basically had one day to discover the delights of Helsinki. I very much doubt we discovered them all but wrapped up warm we headed out the following morning. We had to quickly come to terms with the art of walking in a snowbound city at, by now, -9C, where the delineation between roads and pavements were not exactly well defined. However, we managed to negotiate the 1km walk to Tempelliaukio Church. This is a fairly modern church that is built into the side of a hill. As such it doesn’t look much from the outside but for a place of worship is quite unique on the inside. They do charge tourists €8 to go in though, everyone welcome.

Tempelliaukio Chruch. From the outside: ‘meh’. From the inside: ‘Oooh’

From there we headed back the way we came, past the station and walked (carefully) to Market Square. Whilst there were one or two market stalls and probably loads more in the summer, I felt the name was a bit of a misnomer as it was basically the Helsinki waterfront. Ferries to the Baltic states go from either side whilst in the middle you can get a smaller ferry to Soumenlinna Island. With the Baltic seemingly frozen over, we were surprised to see the ferry operating but a bit of sea ice is nothing for the Finns to worry about. We purchased some tickets and took the ride over to the island. There we had a wander around. The island is home to 800 folk who prefer the peace and quiet of the place to the bustling city. Positioned at the entrance to the harbour, Soumenlinna had strategic significance and much of it was fortified. It was a nice place to visit and plenty of tourists do, even in February with the sea seemingly frozen over. A few hours on the island was plenty though and after just missing the ferry, we spent an extra hour in a nearby cafe before heading back to the mainland. A few photos of interesting buildings later and we were back at the hotel for a bit of rest prior to dinner. This is where I managed to fit in my sauna session, just to say I’ve been to a Finnish sauna. It was no different to any other sauna I’ve been in to be honest but it was nice to have a bit of a sweat.

Market Place/Harbour. Who would have thought that this humble little ferry was a mighty icebreaker?

Soumenlinna Island. Big guns, interesting buildings and most impressive of all, an outdoor hockey rink.

Heading back to the ferry which left just before we get there.

Orthodox and Lutheran cathedrals, guess which is which.

Helsinki tram, sadly unridden and Central Station, inside and out.

This brings us on to food in Helsinki. We had two dinners here, once after our sightseeing day and another on the night before we came home when we were staying at the airport Hilton but had time to nip into the city thanks to the excellent rail link mentioned earlier. Neither dinner saw us having Finnish food. The first one was at a Georgian restaurant called Rioni. I guess the link between Georgia and Finland is a shared loathing of their Russian neighbour but our reason for going was that it was rated very highly on Trip Advisor. It was very good too, hearty stuff and plenty of it, washed down with Georgian beer as God intended. It was, however, a bit on the costly side. Helsinki dinner number two was Nepalese. This was a bit of an odd one. I’d found Onni Nepal on Google Maps, the reviews were positive so off we went. Rather than a normal restaurant, it was a concession at a food hall in an underground shopping mall. We ate there anyway and it was fantastic. Despite the Nepalese name the food was what we would identify as Indian but none the worse for that. It was also a bargain – €15 for your curry, rice, nan bread, salad and a mysterious sauce. The accompanying Nepalese beer pushed the price up a bit but per-head it was less than the Maharani in Troon.

Apukka Resort

Between our Georgian and Nepalese dinners, we had to fit in the main reason for our trip to Finland. We took a flight from HEL to RVN, the latter being Rovaniemi Airport. The airport will be well known to quite a lot of Brits who take their kids or grandkids there to meet Santa Claus on day trips or short breaks in the run up to Christmas every year. The airport itself has the Arctic Circle running through it but as we were soon to find out, there was plenty of Finland further north than that. From the airport we took an Uber to the Apukka Resort. This went past the destination for most of those pre-christmas travellers, Santa Clause Village. We could have stayed there but decided Apukka, a few miles further north, would suit us better as we wouldn’t have to tell some bearded bloke that we were going to be good boys and girls for the rest of the year. Despite not having the Santa franchise, Apukka is popular with families as well as adults. My first impression was that it was a bit like a small Center Parcs but that does it a disservice. There’s a range of accommodation types but all feature a lot of glass. The idea is that the Aurora Borealis, aka The Northern Lights, may well be dancing their merry dance and you sure as hell don’t want to miss them. We had chosen igloos to stay in. These are not the ice domes that Pingu lives in but wood and glass structures. They look really quite stunning in the snow and were equally stunning on the inside. We chose them as the idea of lying in bed on the upper level and gazing through the glass roof at the Aurora was more than appealing. That didn’t happen but more on that in a bit. The resort has a couple of restaurants and a bar. Guests are a bit of a captive audience, though you could head into town by bus or Uber if you didn’t fancy what was on the menu. We enjoyed lunch there but the one dinner we had was Lappish cuisine. It was quality fare at a price but we didn’t really like it very much. Should there be a next time we would probably seek our evening meals in the town. A breakfast buffet is included in the room rate and was a good quality. There was plenty of things to do there, mainly at extra expense but just wandering round the place, sledging down a hillock and making snow angels was free. It was -13C when we arrived with glorious sunshine. It was, to coin a phrase, magical.

A walk on the lake and one of the resort’s reindeer, not the one I’d eaten the previous evening.

Winter scenes as the sun tries to break through.

A walk through the woods for the last Snow Angel of the trip.

One of the main reasons we had chosen Lapland for a winter break was the opportunity to see the Aurora. In the run up to the holiday we had been keeping an eye on the forecast. Not for the solar activity as that is virtually impossible to predict but the weather. It doesn’t matter how much coronal mass ejection is going on, if it is cloudy you won’t see it. The clear skies had allowed the resort’s visitors a great view on the evening before we arrived. However, those clear skies were due to cloud over just after we got there and remain so for the following three nights. Based on this forecast we (Nicholas actually) decided to fork out for a Northern Lights tour. The tour company would take you to wherever the forecast was more favourable. If that meant entering another nearby country (not Russia, obviously) then so be it. The tour was booked for the evening we arrived at 19:00. Nicholas then got a text to say we would be being picked up at 16:30, instead. Along with three others from the resort, we were picked up at the new time, driven to the company’s office in Rovaniemi and issued with cold weather gear which none of us needed as we were pretty well wrapped up already. Then we set off in search of clear skies. As it turned out we didn’t quite leave Finland. We headed north and bar a couple of comfort breaks kept going for four hours, passing signposts to Murmansk on the way. That’s a long time in a minivan. Eventually we came to the town of Ivalo and left the main road. A few miles further we turned onto another road heading north and a mile after that came to a stop. We got out of the van. The sky was as clear as a bell. The two guys from the tour company set up a camera and reported that the Aurora was there, if rather faint. So faint in fact that we couldn’t see it but the night mode on the iPhone picket up a slight green glow. To be honest, a four hour, 300 km drive for that would have been a disappointment. However, we only had to wait a minute or two before an arc of light formed above us. It was the Aurora! We spent about an hour at the location, oblivious to the -17C temperature, gazing in awe at the spectacle. Well, when I say oblivious to the temperature I might have been lying. Removing gloves to take photos resulted in painful hands almost immediately but I wasn’t going to not get the photos. Speaking of which, the photos bring out the colours. Even after giving my eyes a chance to adapt to the darkness, it was hard to see the colours. The vivid green in the photos was a slightly green tinge to the naked eye and the reds only became apparent when reviewing the pictures. This, however, did not diminish from the spectacle. We have wanted to see the Aurora for years. Every time there has been good sightings where we live we have missed them. Elaine and Nicholas went to Iceland a couple of years ago and didn’t see them. We’ve seen them from an aircraft but observing them whilst on Terra Firma was the goal. Had we stayed at the Apukka Resort that evening we would have missed them. It took £120 each, a ten hour, 600km round trip in a minivan, some frozen hands and a very late night to finally tick off that bucket list item. Woohoo!

Aurora Borealis, nearly perceptible at first but growing stronger.

Aurora in all its glory. Not quite as green to the naked eye but still.

Very cool, both literally and figuratively.

Last of the iPhone pics and my personal favourite.

‘Official’ photos. Faint aurora when we arrived, soon becoming vivid.

Not just green, there’s a hint of red here too.

I promise you that is Elaine standing with me.

Back at the Apukka Resort, under overcast skies now, we had other things to do. The resort offers ‘experiences’ and we’d booked three of them. One was a session in the sauna/whirlpool but we’d cancelled that in the nick of time when we decided to go on the Northern Lights tour. Experience bookings are cancellable up to 24 hours before. That left snowmobiling and dog sledding. The activity centre issues all guests with cold weather gear which, whilst a bit of a faff to put on, is certainly required. For the snowmobiling they give you a helmet too which thankfully wouldn’t be tested on our two hour session. It was good fun zipping around a snowy wilderness on what is basically an ATV fitted with skis. I did nearly take out a signpost but managed to avoid it at the last second, thankfully. There was a €900 excess on the machines if you damaged them. They are easy enough to operate but very heavy on the steering. The speed is limited to 40 kmh or 25 mph if you prefer it.

Nicholas going no handed up a seriously steep incline and whizzing through the snow at 40 kph.

Activity number two was the Husky Adventure. This was originally planned for the morning after we arrived but we rearranged it for the day after that just in case the Northern Lights trip went on late. This was a good call as the Northern Lights trip certainly did go on late. A short introductory course on how to operate a dog sled was given before we were assigned to our sleds and, of course, the huskies that would be pulling them. Having had Elaine as a passenger on my snowmobile, she decided to be a passenger on Nicholas’s sled leaving me to do the mushing solo, hauled by four dogs rather than six. Two of mine were trainees so the handler went ahead on a snowmobile to encourage them. Dog sledding proved even more fun than the snowmobiling. The dogs just loved the snow and seem to enjoy pulling us along. They did drop the occasional shit which was then squashed by the sled runners, thereby liberating more of the smell than the mushers and passengers would have liked, but this was a small price to pay for the experience. Once back at base we were given a hot blueberry juice and a cookie to warm up before being allowed to pet the future sled-haulers. We were told they were puppies but they seemed awfully big for pups. I got a face full of slobbers when I picked one of them up, otherwise they were all rather cute and a bit squidgy thanks to the insulating layer of fat they all have.

My husky dog team. Prada and Casta, two trainee sled pullers at the front and two experienced Siberian huskies behind them who probably had names too.

Master musher Neil with Prada, Casta, Thingy and Whotsit.

The six dogs hauling Elaine and Musher Nicholas enjoying a brief break by frolicking in the snow. They really can’t get enough of the stuff.

(Big) Puppy handling was almost as fun as driving the sleds, except when one of them licks your face.

They likes being petted almost as much as mucking about in the snow.

Rovaniemi

With the Husky experience done (and slobbered face washed) we had a spot of lunch before leaving the resort and checking into our apartment in Rovaniemi town. Being the centre of all things winter and with many references to Santa, Rovaniemi is something of a boomtown at this time of year. As a tourist destination it is more of a hub for the activities in the surrounding area than a place full of stuff to see. There’s plenty of shops and restaurants and a walk along the river is rather nice but I would say that is about it. It’s cheaper to stay there than at the Apukka and fine to use as a base but I’m glad we didn’t book all three nights there. One of the things that is listed as a tourist spot is Roki, the town’s ice hockey club who play in the second division of the Finnish league. As it happens they had a game on the evening we were there. Elaine and Nicholas didn’t want to go for some reason, I can’t think why. They went off for dinner at a nearby Tepanyaki place (they said it was very good) whilst I set out to walk nearly 3 km to the Lappi Areena to take in the game. A ticket was €22 and the venue was nearly full of locals and quite a lot of tourists. I enjoyed it, with Roki winning 3-1. The quality is very good. Finland were, until a week prior to me being there, the Olympic hockey champions and they do seem to love the sport. The following morning we had another wander around the town, saying hello to Santa on the way. He has a booth in the middle of town where you can go and pay to have some photos taken with him. We declined. It was quite interesting to see how a town works when covered in quite a lot of snow where temperatures remain below zero for, seemingly, months. It had actually got warmer whilst we were there with the mercury hovering around -5C – it was almost worth taking a layer off. It was soon time to get an Uber to the airport which was mobbed and finding it hard to cope with the volume of passengers. We flew back to Helsinki, where the temperature had actually crept up to +3C, for a night in the airport Hilton and the aforementioned Nepalese curry. We rose at 04:00 the following morning for our 06:30 flight back to Edinburgh.

The town’s Lutheran Church complete with curious stringed instrument.

Roki hockey at the Lappi Areena. This is an official tourist spot so don’t complain at me including it here.

One of many patches of yellow snow, some park benches and an unsurprisingly closed ice cream hut.

Finnair like to join in with the Santa Claus thing.

Conclusion

In the days leading up to our Finland break, we all experienced some apprehension. It was a new country, one quite different from ours when it comes to climate. Would we find the cold too oppressive? Are the Finns welcoming? Was there enough to do? We invested quite a bit of money in cold weather clothing, from snow boots to long johns, though in the Apukka resort they let you have some serious cold weather gear for the time you are there. Layering up was recommended along with a decent hat and thick socks. Maybe two pairs of thick socks. We must have been doing something right as we kept warm for the most part. You need to give yourself time to change out of the outer layers at least when you go from outside to inside as all the buildings are kept pleasantly warm. Weather considerations aside, Finland seems a great place to visit. The language is indecipherable – its closest relative is Hungarian, don’t ask me why – but virtually everyone speaks English and they speak it better than you do. Everyone we dealt with was pleasant. The public transport in Helsinki was excellent though not so much in Rovaniemi where we found Uber (and walking) to be the best way of getting around. Nothing stops for the snow. It was piled up all around Helsinki but the trams ran as normal, cars were driven, bicycles were ridden and the ferries ran through iced up waters. Even more snow was piled up in Rovaniemi but they just shifted it and got on with life. We never spent a single Euro whilst we were there. This is not really true, we spent quite a lot of them, but all transactions were contactless and all the cash we had brought with us came home. Whilst I’m happy to persuade you to go, I have to mention the elephant in the room, or perhaps it’s the reindeer in the igloo. How much did it cost? I must admit, it wasn’t cheap. An igloo at the Apukka Resort is going to cost you over €1000 per night. It’s a couple of hundred Euros to go dog sledding. Having said that, hotels in Helsinki aren’t too expensive and you might find some bargain eateries like we did with the Nepalese so you may not have to break the bank while you are there. Not too much anyway. It may prove to be the only time we go there but we certainly enjoyed the experience and it has given us memories that will last for as long as we do.

To conclude, as long as you wrap up warm, Finland is a great place for a break. A true Winter Wonderland.

Fifty Fifty

Apologies for the lack of blogs recently. I tend to find that January is a time of planning the year’s adventures rather than actually partaking in any so it’s been hard to find something worth blogging about. We have had a General Election and Brexit since my last blog but I doubt you want to hear my opinions on both of those when you have access to so much well informed debate and reasoned discussion through social media. Politician X is a c***. F*** Politician Y. Politician Z is an f***ing c***. All classy stuff of which I’m not going to add to here. You are far more interested in where I go on my holidays, my embarrassing ailments and of course my brief dalliance with swimming in the nuddy.

Behold the 50/50 ticket of good fortune.

For my first blog of 2020 I’m visiting the subject of good fortune. As you know, I like Ice Hockey. A tradition at professional hockey games is a thing called the Fifty Fifty. This is basically a raffle. You buy a ticket for, say, a pound. Other people also buy a ticket and by the beginning of the third period the total number of tickets sold is tallied up. One ticket stub is then drawn at random and the owner of the ticket to which it was formerly attached wins a cash prize consisting of exactly half the amount of money collected. The other half is then used to bolster the hockey club’s finances, usually on the premise of assisting junior development. It is quite a simple premise. The more tickets that get sold, the bigger the prize and of course the less chance you have of winning it. I was recently at an NHL game in Vancouver where the ticket sales were constantly updated on the big screen. The last I saw it appeared that nearly C$120,000 had been spent on 50/50 tickets meaning some lucky chap was going to leave the game C$60,000 richer. The Rogers Arena has a capacity of over 18,000 and those sales suggest each person present bought an average of C$15 worth of 50/50 tickets, approximately £9. Of course not everyone buys them so some fans must make a major investment in an attempt to win the prize. Add in some overpriced arena food and drink, and a seat which will have cost anywhere between £50 and £250 and hockey night in Canada isn’t exactly for those a bit short of cash.

I digress. I watch my hockey in Glasgow where the Glasgow, formerly Braehead, Clan have been playing for the past ten seasons. They have had a 50/50 draw if not from their inception, for as long as I can remember. Prizes were initially a couple of hundred pounds but as the club became more popular and the new fanbase caught on to the tradition the prize totals crept up. For a number of seasons I bought a ticket or maybe two. By the 2015-16 season I was generally buying five a game. I must add here that I’m not a gambler. I’ve bet on a horse just a couple of times in my life and I’m £10 worse off than I would have been had I not stepped inside a betting shop. That still irks. Gambling has zero appeal to me. Entering a lottery which aims to raise money for good causes is different, however. It is a form of charity and yes, there is a small chance you might win something worthwhile but you justify it knowing that the money you’ve spent is going to be put to good use. Such was my reasoning for buying 50/50 tickets at the hockey, even if the real beneficiary was not a charity but a commercially run sports club that still has no trophies to its name. I never won of course. I never really expected to. I did check the number whenever the winning ticket was announced midway through the third period but the closest I got was when that number was just two away from mine. Had I only been one person ahead in the queue to buy the ticket it would have been me. Hey-ho. Eventually I stopped buying the 50/50 tickets. I think we were having a particularly bad season and felt less inclined to part with any more money than was strictly speaking necessary.

I was at a hockey game the other night. This was different. It was a testimonial game for a player, Matt Haywood, who joined the club when it was formed in 2010 at the age of 19. The fact he is still there is quite remarkable for the sport of ice hockey. Such loyalty and service were deemed, rightly in my opinion, to be worthy of a testimonial year and one of the events was this game which featured the current Clan team take on one made up of ex-Clan players. I paid for my seat some months ago and turned up for the evening’s activities along with nearly 3,000 others. This was a good turnout on a Tuesday evening in February. The ‘game’ consisted of two periods of not at all serious hockey separated by a skills challenge period. At the end of the first period I took a stroll into the concourse and had a look at the merchandise. On the way back into the arena I decided that as it was a testimonial game I’d invest in some 50/50 tickets. It was a good cause after all. I had a fiver in my wallet so bought five, plonking them in my pocket and basically forgetting about them for the next hour or two. Midway through the third period the announcer informed the crowd to get their tickets ready as the draw had been made. Normally he would inform us of the total prize money but he did not have that information to hand on this occasion. I dug the tickets out of my pocket.

“The winning ticket is number one, four, one…”. Good start I thought.

“Zero, nine…”. Blimey, I’m still in the game.

“Five…”. Ooer!

“Five”. I looked at my top ticket. 1410953. I hope they are in sequence! Next ticket: 1410954. Looking promising. Next ticket: 1410955. Ya dancer! (Glasgow rubs off on you sometimes). But hang on. Was that the number he said? I turned to a group of ladies sat behind me.

“Did he say one four one zero nine five five?”, I asked.

“Not sure”, they said. Eventually we sort of agreed that the number announced was the same as the third ticket in my pile and that I was indeed the winner of what at the time was a mystery prize total. After a celebratory fist pump with the ladies I headed out of the arena to the concourse to claim the prize. I must add here that in a normal game this is one thing that puts me off the 50/50 draw. If I ever managed to win it I may well receive a significant amount of cash but I’d miss what could be an exciting end to the game. This game, however, was not a serious affair as witnessed by the final score, 19-17 to the ex-Clansmen, so walking out before its conclusion was no great hardship. At the desk in the foyer I stated my claim. The two volunteer ladies who run the draw at every Clan game were still tallying up the takings. Tracy, who works for the Clan and I know of old, was also on hand and wrote the winning amount on a big presentation cheque that has been doing the job for many seasons. The total takings for the 50/50 draw was £2,940. The prize money, as written on the cheque, was £1,470. That is not the end of it of course. There is an official presentation at the end of the game. Before I was led down to the ice, however, I was handed an envelope. It took me a bit by surprise. It contained my winnings in £10 and £20 notes. I hadn’t really given any thought to how I’d receive the money. Armed with an envelope of banknotes and a large imitation cheque I headed into the bowels of the arena. Almost as soon as the game ended I was gesticulated onto the ice where there was rubber matting laid out to reduce the chance of slipping. Kevin the announcer, who I also know of old, informed the fans that the winner of the 50/50 was Neil Hughes and I marched out with the big cheque to monumental applause. Well, maybe a ripple of polite applause. And not an insignificant amount of apathy. I got my photo taken with the cheque and a couple of pretty girls and wandered back to the area behind the players’ benches. I hung around to watch further presentations and the speech by Matt Haywood and that was that. The cheque was left ready for the name of next Saturday’s winner to take the place of mine, I said goodbye to Tracy and headed out into the departing crowds. I did nip back to the mech desk though and bought a tee shirt. I thought it was the least I could do.

Gambling is a sin and the wages of sin are, in this case, a flipping great wodge of cash.

I accept the prize to a muttered chorus of ‘Lucky Bastard’ from the stands. The girl to my right seems more delighted than me. Picture: Al Goold (www.algooldphoto.com)

I drove home delighted with my good fortune yet with a slight sense of unease. Did I deserve to win? Yes, it’s a game of chance but there are many people who buy 50/50 tickets religiously every game. Surely they are more deserving than me? For some of those £1,470 would make a big difference to their lives, maybe buy them a well deserved holiday, a much needed new washing machine or perhaps enable them to renew their season tickets for next year. I eventually came round though and thought ah well, it’s a game of chance, ‘deserve’ doesn’t really enter into it. I was there ten years ago when Matt Haywood started his Clan career after all. The next question is just what to spend it on. Elaine said that we could use it to pay for some work we are having done in the garage. Well yes, but the truth is we would be paying for that anyway. This money should be spent on something above and beyond. The banknotes were deposited in the bank the following day. There the money will remain until I decide how it should be used. Come to think of it, our telly is 13 years old and perhaps it’s time for a new one…

Ten years with the Clan (just like the bloke in the Clan jersey watching in the background) number eleven, Matt Haywood. (The one with the beard, not the ribbon) Picture: Al Goold (www.algooldphoto.com)

A Season of Three Halves

Glasgow Clan 2018-19 Season Review

By Neil Hughes

Hockey is a serious business. There are only two officially sanctioned jokes that you can use when it comest to the British game. The first is I went to a boxing match last night and an ice hockey game broke out. Oh how we laughed at that one. It is becoming less relevant nowadays as fighting has become something of a rarity in recent years but hey, we honour the game’s traditions and all that. The second joke is hockey is a game of three halves. For those of you that don’t get it a game of hockey is played over three twenty minute periods. Glasgow Clan’s 2018-19 season can also be split up into three distinct ‘halves’ of approximately twenty league games each and can be described thus: Average, Fantastic and Disappointing. The story of the season is, however, a tad more complicated than that including as it does the Challenge Cup campaign and the briefest of stints in the Play Offs. Compared with the horror show that was the 2017-18 season it was a huge improvement and for a while promised to be something special. That it all rather fizzled out should not take away from the fact that the club finished fourth in the league, a credible result, regained the conference trophy, a rather pointless piece of silverware following changes to the league structure but better Clan having it than Fife, and played a much more entertaining brand of hockey.

In the summer of 2018 there were many changes for the Clan fans to ponder. A new coach was appointed, Pete Russell. Having enjoyed success as the coach the GB team, Russell joined from Milton Keynes. Joining him would be a whole new set of players with only Brits Matt Haywood, Gary Russell and Zach Sullivan and import Michael Gutwald returning from the squad that had so miserably underperformed the previous season. Three of the new arrivals were well known to the Clan faithful. Scott Pitt and Matt Beca returned after a year in Manchester. Both were points machines during their previous stint at Braehead and had carried that form with them down to Manchester so getting them back was something of a coup. The other was Zack Fitzgerald, returning after a couple of years in Sheffield and being appointed the captain’s ‘C’. As the rest of the squad was recruited the fans could only hope that they would click together and give them something to cheer about. Cheers had been thin on the ground for several seasons. Another change was that Braehead Clan was now Glasgow Clan. This change in moniker was long overdue and with it was a new logo, not to this observer’s taste unfortunately, and hopefully a new direction.

The other big change was the league format. Edinburgh’s exclusion from the league meant an eleven team competition. The existing three conferences of four became two of four and one of three but were competitions in name only and held little significance. There would be no conference bias in the fixtures – each team in the league would meet the others six times for a sixty game season. This makes direct comparisons with previous season tricky as Clan played the wealthy ‘good’ sides more and the poor ‘bad’ less or not at all but improvement is obvious – 4th place in the league as opposed to 9th, 67 points from 60 games compared with 54 from 56 (16 of which came in eight games against the hapless Edinburgh). It could have been even better had it not been for the ending but more of that later. Four pre-season games took place at Braehead towards the end of August against foreign opposition as a warm up to the season proper which as usual saw Clan play the month of September on the road as Disney took up residence on the hallowed ice. That month and the following saw a mixture of league and Challenge Cup group games.

The Challenge Cup campaign saw Clan in a group with Fife, Dundee and Belfast. The first competitive game of the season took place in Fife where a controversial ending saw the hosts take the game into overtime and claim the victory. Defeats in Dundee and Belfast followed before Fife pitched up at Braehead on 5th October for Clan’s first competitive home game of the season. A 2-1 victory finally got the cup campaign underway though a defeat at home to Belfast meant that qualification for the quarter final looked unlikely. The last group game saw Clan take a 5-4 penalty shot victory over Dundee and after several days wait for other clubs to finish their group games, Clan had sneaked into the quarter final by the skin of their teeth as eighth seeds. That two legged affair saw them face Cardiff as the top seeded Belfast elected to face Dundee in the competition’s pick your opponent rules. The game took place at the end of November and beginning December, Clan coming back from a 3-0 deficit after just one period of the home first leg but losing the game 4-3. In the return leg and completely out of the blue Clan outplayed the highly fancied Cardiff and after sixty minutes the score was 5-4 on their favour, 8-8 on aggregate. The game went to overtime and Matt Haywood scored the winning goal to put Clan in the semi final. Another two legged affair, Clan faced Belfast initially at Braehead at the end of January. A 2-1 victory gave them a slender advantage going into the second leg two weeks later. Alas, the impressive Belfast were too strong and ran out 6-3 winners on the night taking the tie 7-5 on aggregate. Belfast would go on and lift the trophy beating Guildford in the final. Clan could reflect on getting further in the competition than they had done in all bar one other season of their existence.

The Challenge Cup is all well and good but for most fans the league provided the games that mattered. Comparing Clan’s record against each of their opponents shows improvement in just about every case. Whilst the Gardiner Conference was still there its significance was much reduced but Clan’s record against the other two conference members meant that they claimed the trophy with several weeks to go.

Belfast and Cardiff dominated the league and proved to be difficult opponents to all the clubs, not just Clan. Not obtaining a single point against Cardiff was tempered a little by the Challenge Cup Quarter Final victory. Clan had more success against the eventual champions Belfast with two victories, one a particularly pleasing 5-0 thumping in the middle of February when the club were at the height of their powers. Of the other wealthy clubs, the spoils were equally shared with Nottingham whilst Clan completely dominated Sheffield including 6-0 and 6-1 victories in South Yorkshire. Although Sheffield were having a particularly grim season Clan’s record against the big four was as good as it has ever been. The four opponents from the Patten Conference proved to be a mixed bag with 50% records against Coventry and Manchester, both an improvement from last season and a healthy record against league wooden spoonist Milton Keynes. Again, Guildford proved to be something of a bogey club, a point emphasised when it came to the Play Offs. Despite Guildford’s dominance, Clan finished the regular season on the same points as their Southern England foes and one place higher in the standings due to a higher number of regulation victories. Against the two Scottish clubs Clan proved particularly effective, dominating Dundee and posting a record against Fife that expunged the nightmare of the previous season where a 1-7 league record against the hated Flyers was for many fans just about the worst aspect of that season.

So what of those three halves? Clan’s first twenty or so league games were a so-so mixture of reasonable results and some horrors. The record wasn’t much of an improvement on the previous season and the fans that had initially been willing to let the team and coach settle in were beginning to get a little restless. In early December a poor performance in a home defeat to Manchester drew much criticism but a few days later Clan won that Challenge Cup Quarter Final in Cardiff and the season changed right there. Over the course of the next two months Clan became the form team in the league. Of 22 games played Clan lost just six, only three of which were in regulation time. They flew up the standings into third place and whilst Belfast and Cardiff were never threatened, Clan’s best finish for four years looked likely. Elimination from the Challenge Cup in mid February is seen as the second turning point in the season though Clan did win two of their next three league games which included that 5-0 victory against the Giants and a 6-1 win in Sheffield. It was after this game that the form book was thrown away and the season went into a steep decline. Of the next eleven games Clan won just one, ironically their sole victory against bogey club Guildford, as the regular season wore down and Nottingham claimed third place in the league. The final game of the regular season was away in Fife who had won in Braehead the previous evening. A temporary reprieve from what had been going on in the previous few weeks, Clan claimed a 4-2 win, their first in eight games, and by the narrowest margins took fourth place in the league table.

As a result Clan would meet Guildford in the Play Off Quarter Final. The two legged affair commenced in Guildford and Clan returned home with a slender advantage after a 3-2 win. Could it be that their luck was changing and the form had returned? Alas, no. At Braehead Guildford soon cancelled out Clan’s advantage, and were 3-0 up. 5-3 on aggregate, as time ran out. With the last throw of the dice Clan pulled the netminder and inevitably Guildford scored into the empty net. Rubbing salt into the wound they went and added another in the last few seconds to win 5-0 on the night, a fully deserved victory even if the final scoreline was extremely flattering. Whilst two legged, aggregate score games are not a very hockey way of deciding play off match ups, they are what they are and Clan’s abysmal record in six period hockey games continues. Clan’s absence from the postseason party was extended by another year.

It’s quite hard trying to analyse a season like that. The first part can perhaps be explained by the fact the team was basically built from scratch and whilst it took longer than it might have done, players took their time to get settled with their linemates and Russell’s systems. Around the time of the dramatic improvement in form, Clan released headline signing Josh Gratton. Whilst his reputation as a tough man had been barely tested in the early part of the season his points production had been surprisingly good but for whatever reason he was deemed surplus to requirements. Without him the team performance immediately improved and whilst that might be something of a coincidence, the decision to release him certainly appeared to pay dividends. Two or three games later he was replaced by Guillaume Doucet, a known goal scorer from his time in the league and what seemed to be a perfect fit in the gap left by Gratton. The ‘new’ Clan played with joy and freedom and scored goals, plenty of them. It was a great time to be watching hockey. As to why that form changed again no one seems to know. Yes, the club had a difficult run-in with multiple games against Belfast, Cardiff, an improving Nottingham and a mysteriously troublesome Guildford but the goals just dried up, especially at home. Defensively Clan were prone to lapses in concentration but had been all season – you just tend to notice them less when the forwards are smacking in loads of goals at the other end. Goaltending never really hit the heights. Joel Rumpel didn’t have the greatest of starts to the season but bucked up during the club’s good run. However, the season ended modestly for him. Whilst Rumpel was by no means a donkey like a couple of the previous minders of the Clan net, a more assured netminder could have earned the club the three or four more points that would have meant a third place finish.

Whatever the reason for the loss in form, the season was a qualified success. The dreadful slide down the standings over the previous couple of seasons was arrested and for a time we were treated to some of the best hockey and run of results as we have ever witnessed at Braehead. Pete Russell has cut a popular figure over the course of the season and everyone was delighted when he committed to the club for another twelve months immediately after this season ended. It may well have been a season of three halves but overall it was one where being a Clan fan became fun again.

Postscript: I saw one of the four preseason games but those aside I missed twelve home games this season. Coventry 20/10 (Retirement do), Belfast 3/11 (Huddersfield), Sheffield 16/11 (USA), MK 17/11 (USA), Guildford 24/11 (Czech), Cardiff (CC) 28/11 (Personal), Coventry 30/11 (Personal), Sheffield 23/12 (Finger operation), Manchester 27/12 (Finger), Belfast 29/1 (Antigua), Fife 1/1 (Antigua), Manchester 9/2 (Personal). Five were victories, seven were defeats. I got to no road games but watched three webcasts. I missed the live TV game in MK which was just as well.