Since signing from Newcastle Vipers in 2007, Jonathan Weaver has experienced real highs and lows with Coventry, from league success to play off failure, Weaver has been in the thick of it.

The 32 year old defenseman might not be Blaze’s longest serving player but there’s no doubt of his commitment to the club. Coach Paul Thompson is full of praise, describing Weaver as the best player in the league right now and lucky for us, he’ll be sticking around until 2012.

Right now, however, Jonathan is concentrating on the season ahead, and he’s optimistic about our chances. Speaking after October’s 5-2 win over Sheffield he explained the importance of the game.

“It’s a huge win for us. They’re a team who are going to be there at the end of the season so to get the wins against them early is key. They lost a lot of good guys from last year and that’s going to upset the balance of the team but we know come the end of the season they’re going to be strong.”

So far Blaze have achieved three wins from three league games against Sheffield but Jonathan knows the road to league success is long and difficult.

“If we play like that every game then there’s no reason why any team in the league should come near us. But we’ve got to bring that kind of edge in, that kind of focus every game, which sometimes we don’t.”

Blaze have already felt defeat at the hands of Sheffield this year, after losing 3-2 in last month’s 20/20 HockeyFest. Although it wasn’t an ideal result, the tournament was followed by some big wins over Sheffield and Nottingham, and a more consistent form throughout October.

With the new format and slightly different rules of HockeyFest, the team didn’t know what to expect beforehand.

“It was kind of a shot in the dark before we went,” Weaves said. “We just went up there with the right attitude, worked hard and played solid. It took us right to the final and obviously when you get that far you want to win but we played well.”

Jonathan explained why a consistent performance is vital for Blaze’s chances and why every point counts: “The last three or four years there have been two or three outstanding teams. This year, it seems like any team can beat any team so all that’s going to do is compound the league, bring everyone closer together and it’s going to be a lot tighter come the end of the season.”

With the squad gelling together and playing as a team, Weaver is confident Blaze have what it takes to consistently win and grind out the points needed to finish top in March.

“We’ve got a great set of guys who all get on in the rink and away from it. That’s key to a successful squad” Jonathan said. “The new guys have come in and slotted in really well. It’s a happy place to be.”

And how is he finding his partnership with Jason Robinson?

“I played with Robbo in Newcastle for a while, we complement each other. He’s a big tough stay at home defenseman, I like to get to the puck and move it up. So we play off each other and it seems to be working alright.”

According to the stats, more than alright, actually. With 14 assists Jonathan Weaver is ranked fourth in points for Blaze. Some good form he credited to a summer spent in extra training.

“I’m getting a little bit older so I’ve started looking after my body a bit better, I was running quite a bit to keep myself in shape, looking after what I ate, and it’s paid off. I feel a lot sharper on the ice.”

He might be getting that little bit older, but Jonathan is keen to continue playing, and Coventry are happy to have him, recently extending his contract by two years.

“If I look after myself the next few years, stay injury free, there’s no reason why I can’t keep playing. I still enjoy it so I’ll be playing for as long as I can. You can never read too far into the future but I’d like to finish my career here.”

Playing with, rather than against Coventry is preferable for Weaver who recounts his joining the club two years ago.

“It was a club I’d always admired from afar but it wasn’t a nice place to come and play. It’s a tough building to come to, the crowd are intimidating and Thommo’s had a good team here but I knew working with him in the GB team what he was all about. I knew the organisation was stable and a good place to be so I was excited to come.”

With the Elite League dropping import numbers from 11 to 10 this season, keeping Brits in the squad is a real asset and Jonathan was full of praise for our British lads.

“If you’ve got a strong Brit core then you’re one step ahead of the rest. We’ve got a good set of Brit’s here, young Joe [Henry] has stepped up and he’s done a great job for us so far.”

Since earning regular ice time this year, Henry has done nothing but impress.

“He’s been playing fantastic, he’s smart on the puck, he’s patient, he makes the right plays and he works hard” praised Jonathan. “Obviously he’s going to have the odd mistake here and there but we all do, that’ll come with age and experience.”

The future looks promising for Henry who, according to Weaver, should be aiming for a spot in the Great Britain squad.

“If he keeps playing the way he is, he’s in the best place to be with the national coach. Thommo sees him every day and if he keeps his head down, works hard, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be there.”

So the key to the future success of Coventry Blaze? Continuing our good form. And with Weaver looking to see out his career with us, the future looks bright.

The article in it’s published format can be found here.

It’s almost 6pm on a Sunday evening in the Skydome. Awaiting the game ahead, the crowd are cheering and clapping along to the music. Children, and a couple of adults too, are calling out for their favourite Blaze representative.

No, it isn’t Calder, Carlson or Weaver. It’s a big green monster.

“Scorch!” a young boy shouts, waving at the Coventry Blaze mascot as he skates onto the ice. Throwing tennis balls into the crowd, the spotlight is firmly on Scorch who as I later found out, revels in the attention.

“I love it!” he said. “It’s great fun. It’s good to see the smiles on the kid’s faces. Some kids come up and it’s the highlight of their week high fiving Scorch. You get a few that run and hide behind their parents but they’re the ones I pick on the most.”

This isn’t a mean streak, but part of what Scorch describes as his cheeky character. “I can get away with a lot being in the costume, stealing people’s hats and scarves, messing around with the opposition fans,” he laughed.

I ask if there are certain people he picks on every week.  Scorch can’t help a cheeky grin, “Definitely” he said.

Although it tends to be those who know his secret identity who are the victim of such abuse. “People get to know who I am after a while but initially I just pick on randoms.”

Wearing a green fur suit and acting as a target for fans to throw pucks at you in the period break is a strange job, one which Scorch almost accidentally fell into.

“When Coventry first got the mascot, I sort of flippantly said, ‘I’d like to have a go at that’. The match night co-ordinator then had a chat with the guy that was doing it originally and that was that” said Scorch.

He was then whisked away from his previous role selling 50/50 tickets and promoted to part time mascot, initially sharing the role of Scorch with another. After a brief time away from the dragon costume to recover from a broken ankle he then took over the job completely.

Much like a pro hockey player, Scorch sticks to the same routine every week. “I get to the rink about four, get in costume about quarter to five, then mess around in the queue until doors open.”

“The players turn up on a match night with their game faces on and I don’t get involved with that. I just turn up and do my thing and leave them to do theirs.”

After the next task of throwing tennis balls into the crowd, there’s just time for a few high fives and perhaps a photograph or two, before Scorch gets changed and enjoys some hockey with the rest of us.

However, five minutes before the end of each period, the green suit is thrown back on. “Since I’ve been the mascot I’ve missed probably 90% of goals at the Skydome!” A bit of a drawback, but he went on to explain that the job does bring great rewards.

“Probably one of the best parts of doing it is winding up the away fans. They all love to give me a bit of a barracking. It’s part of the game.” In a typical break, Scorch can usually be found standing at the bottom of Block 8, being jeered by, or perhaps having his tail pulled by some overexcited away fans.

The perks just keep coming, especially at the Play Offs – the biggest opportunity of the year for mayhem. “The league pays us for the Play Off Finals. We get looked after really well, they feed us and keep us well watered.”

To Scorch though, the chance to reignite old rivalries with the other mascots is more important than the cash.

“We all get a bit cheeky and play around more. Generally we all gang up on Gordie[the gorilla] from Belfast. He tends to give it a bit more, when he’s got his inflatable banana and starts hitting people over the head.”

Revenge usually takes the form of a group mascot fight, with plenty of encouragement from the crowd, of course. Scorch loves the attention, but there have been times when he has publicly embarrassed himself.

“The first time I dressed up as Scorch, in a game against Newcastle, I stepped on the ice – straight on my bum! My first time in costume and I had to get helped back to my feet. It wasn’t ideal.”

In fact, Scorch told me that most of his embarrassing moments have involved him falling onto the ice. “I’ve also been body checked by a linesman and put on my butt while I was skating around. That was my own fault though, because I’d tried to hit him,” he said. Scorch explained that since then he has learnt the valuable lesson not to pick on those who are stronger and better at skating than him.

The responsibilities of a Blaze mascot are a welcome change from Scorch’s day job as a senior customer account manager. After all providing financial advice for a high street bank rarely involves taking part in a donkey derby.

“The Leofric Lions organise it at the memorial park and I was part of the donkey race,” he said. “All the mascots are there, Sky Blue Sam, the Coventry Rugby Club mascot and a teddy bear. All of us were on the back of chariots racing donkeys around the memorial park. That was good fun. ”  

Unfortunately, due to problems with a ‘dodgy donkey’ Scorch didn’t bring home the winning trophy that day. With a late sprint to the line, however, he did finish a respectable second. Better luck next time for Scorch who assures me he’ll be around for a while yet.

“There’s another mascot in his forties so I could aspire to that, but as long as they’ll have me!”

This was the only lesson where mucking about was allowed. You didn’t have to read or write anything, just remember to bring your kit.

Occasionally, you might get to do trampolining, or even better, play tennis with the boys.

I loved PE, except when we had to play netball.

Six hundred thousand of you obviously feel otherwise. That’s how many people have signed up in support of a campaign to get netball into the 2012 Olympics.

Right from scrambling for a bib, the letters of which determined just how bearable the next hour would be, I knew netball was not for me. I could only hope and pray the other girls didn’t get there before me and leave me with “GK” – Goal Keeper, the worst position of the lot.

My dislike of the sport probably wasn’t helped by the fact I could never remember where I was allowed to be.

Even if I managed to steal myself a bib that got me into the goal circle, most of my classmates were taller than me. And, of course, on that day when I was allowed to shoot, the goalkeeper turned out to be tallest girl in the whole school. I couldn’t see the hoop, never mind throw a ball through it.

For those of you who don’t share my pain, this campaign, like so many things, began on Facebook.

Since Team Bath goalkeeper Eboni Beckford-Chambers started a group on the social networking site last year, the campaign has made it into the media spotlight.

Famous faces signed up so far include Dame Kelly Holmes, Bryan Robson and Cherie Blair.

According to the website even Gordon Brown wants netball in the Olympics.

Played by over a million women and girls a week in the UK, there seems to be the demand to see women compete at the highest level.

Backing the bid, Holmes was surprised the sport was not already included in the Olympics:

“Netball is one of the most popular team games for women in the world, and is already a core part of the Commonwealth Games”, she said.

By encouraging women to play sport and giving them role models to aspire to, Holmes suggested including netball “would have a huge impact on women everywhere.”

This, I think, is a bit ambitious. However, any opportunity for women to demonstrate their sporting ability and take a step out of the shadow of men’s sport has got to be a good thing.

So do I support the campaign? Yes. Anything which could get people playing sport has to be applauded.

But, should the campaign succeed, will I be watching? Probably not.

Can you imagine going to a football match and being told to be quiet? Especially by your own club, at your home ground?

Well, at last weekends game against Wigan, this happened to Middlesbrough fans.

According to a letter sent out by the club’s safety officer, Sue Watson, a certain group of fans were just too loud.

“This constant noise is driving some fans mad,” it said, and fans in block 53A were told to save the cheering for celebrating goals.

The club has since apologised, when it realised issuing the letter was a bad move.

Middlesbrough are currently hanging around the bottom of the table, trying to avoid relegation. With goals in short supply, the club could have found themselves with no atmosphere at all.

This letter got me thinking. Do clubs have a right to tell us, as paying fans, how to behave?

The Middlesbrough example is a bit of a strange one. While it’s not abnormal for clubs to tell fans to keep the noise down, they’re usually talking about fans chanting abuse, not supporting their own team.

Just think back to October last year and the World Cup qualifiers at Wembley.

All the fuss surrounding Ashley Cole’s gaff of a pass which gifted Kazakhstan their only goal. The fans weren’t happy and so not for the first time they booed one of their own.

England managed to stick another three in the net and win 5-1 so it wasn’t the costly mistake it perhaps could have been.

And yet, everyone wanted to talk about it.

There seemed to be two sides to the argument: In the red corner, those who think booing is the fastest way to voice your opinion when things aren’t going well. This is the verbal equivalent of ticking the boxes marked “very unsatisfied” on a customer feedback form.

In the blue corner, are those who favour more support and less criticism. Rio Ferdinand said at the time the fans who booed Cole should “go home and reflect on it and feel a bit ashamed of themselves.”

I don’t mind a bit of booing. It adds to the pantomime feeling of being in a crowd. What I don’t like is the thought of being told off for doing it.

In fact, I don’t like the idea that a club, or a player, has a say in my behaviour as a fan.

I’ve never seen fans nannied as much as I did last summer at the Beijing Olympics. A strong example but one that demonstrates how the atmosphere can suffer for it.

In the build up to Beijing, Chinese fans were taught how to behave at Olympic events. The chant “Jaiyou Zhongguo” (Let’s go China) was drilled into them so much I rarely heard anything else.

Volunteers were brought in to instruct the crowd how to clap and cheer. At Capital Stadium, where I worked during the Volleyball events, there were sometimes blocks full of uniformed fans, trained to lead the applause and create an exciting atmosphere.

It didn’t work. All the spontaneity of a crowd following the drama on court was lost, killed by so much repetition.

When the Chinese fans did show their passion and enthusiasm naturally, the atmosphere was like nothing I’ve experienced before. It was fantastic.

So if clubs want an incredible atmosphere, they need the passion of their fans to do it. And telling us how to behave will only stop it showing through.

In a flash, de Lima lost his 45 second lead and finished with a bronze medal instead of the gold he was almost certain to have won. All because Horan was trying to tell the world about our apparent impending doom.

But what has happened since then? What became of Horan and the victim of his ill-fated stunt?

Entering the stadium in Athens, de Lima was greeted to a hero’s welcome, with the crowd cheering his hard fought bronze medal.

With his arms outstretched he soared towards the finish line. Throwing kisses and waving to the crowd, de Lima’s Olympic spirit shone through. After all, he was the first, and so far only Brazilian to have medaled in this event.

De Lima’s sportsmanship was later recognized when he was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for “exceptional demonstration of fair play and Olympic values”.  A nice gesture from the International Olympic Committee, but hardly a gold medal.

The appreciation for de Lima was repeated in his homeland and he became a Brazilian celebrity.

The press was eager to tell the story of the Brazilian farm boy who from humble roots grew into the country’s most famous marathon runner and the national athlete of the year in 2004.

In one television interview, Brazilian beach volleyball champion, Emanuel Rego placed the gold medal he had won in Athens around de Lima’s neck, making a gesture that spoke for all athletes who keep going in the face of adversity.

Although finishing third, Vanderlei de Lima was treated like a champion in Brazil. He received $66,000 from a supermarket chain who had promised the prize to any Brazilian who won gold in Athens.

Despite a subsequent appeal by the Brazilian Olympic Committee for a duplicate gold medal to be awarded, the result was not changed.

Undeterred, de Lima started his preparations for the 2008 Beijing Games.

In May of this year, just two months before the start of the Beijing Olympics, de Lima announced he would not compete.
An injury to his left thigh had forced him to drop out of the qualifiers and left him unable to defend his medal.

At 39 years of age, it looks as though this was his last chance at Olympic gold. Perhaps though, Vanderlei de Lima will overcome difficulty once again and be back in 2012, running the marathon in London.

And what of Cornelius Horan? For his role in this drama he was given a 12 month suspended prison sentence by a Greek court and fined 3,000 Euros.

Horan had previously spent two months in prison for aggravated trespass after bursting onto the track at the British Grand Prix.

The publicity-seeking priest would appear in the press again after being charged with indecent assault against a seven year old girl. He was later acquitted and celebrated by performing an Irish jig outside court.

Horan was defrocked by the Catholic Church in January 2005.

Despite saying he would not disrupt anymore sporting events, Horan was arrested by German police before the 2006 World Cup final after planning a stunt outside the venue.
Calling it a ‘peace jig’ he had planned to carry posters in support of Adolf Hitler.

Since then, he received an ASBO banning him from entering certain London boroughs to keep him away from last year’s London marathon.

Since Horan’s stunt in Athens four years ago, the end of the world has not arrived. What has, one hopes, ended is Horan’s crusade of gatecrashing sporting events.

The rest of us, however, look to athletes like Vanderlei de Lima for inspiration and a lesson in sportsmanship and fair play.

Sheffield also failed to capitalize on the powerplay, with some poor passing meaning they could only scramble the puck into the offensive zone.

Steelers fans had something to cheer about ten minutes in, when Ryan Finnerty got the better of Bruce Richardson when blows were exchanged after a disagreement between the pair.

The penalties were one sided with Finnerty receiving five minutes in the box for fighting, but Richardson was handed two minutes for boarding, and two plus ten for instigating on top of his fighting penalty.

Frustrations ran high in the Steelers camp, with Talbot, Sheppard and Munn all producing good shots which couldn’t find their way past netminder Davis Parley.

Nottingham faced even more time on the penalty kill with defenceman Danny Meyers receiving a hooking penalty just after the ten minute mark.

Despite a five on three advantage Sheffield still failed to produce the goods and even allowed Panther Kevin Bergin a shot on goal which was only ruined by a snapped stick.

Nottingham soon snapped up the chance to dominate after the Steelers found themselves with two men in the box.

Wasting no time on the powerplay, they quickly set up camp in the Steelers zone.

The first goal of the match came at 15:15 when Corey Neilson passed behind the goal to find Johan Molin who flicked the puck into the net.

The second period was awash with goals, the first of which brought the score to an even one all.

Solid teamwork improved the Steelers powerplay and Captain Jonathan Phillips easily found the net, despite Rumun Ndur’s best efforts to defend.

Steelers fans once again reveled in Ndur’s misery, when he repeatedly fluffed shots on the backhand before being pushed off the puck.

Soon it was Nottingham’s turn to celebrate, scoring two powerplay goals in just under a minute and a half. Bergin scored the first, a wristshot from the blue line which keeper Jody Lehman had no answer for.

A frustrated Lehman then found himself with a two minute slashing penalty, which Corey Neilson took advantage of, hitting Lehman’s water bottle for the Panthers third goal.

The away team quickly lost their discipline and a penalty on Dan Tessier for holding the stick marked the end of Nottingham’s chances.

Steelers took just 19 seconds to convert the penalty into a goal. Robert Dowd put the puck in the net with his first of the night, assisted by Dagenais and Finnerty.

Sheffield were on form now, working hard for their equalizing goal which came at 35:22. The first even handed of the night, scored by Joe Talbot after a scrum around the net.

Just 2 minutes later defenseman Steve Munn easily skated around the defence to set up Dowd for his second. This put Steelers ahead for the first time.

Nottingham’s bad defending continued and were lucky not to be more behind as the period ended 4-3.

The goals had rolled in during the second, but the third period was goalless until the last three minutes of play when Sheffield nabbed two.

Nottingham had lost momentum in the break and could only scrape together a few chances to score. Frustrations were felt by Ndur who talked himself into a ten minute penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct after disagreeing with a hooking call.

Man of the match Dowd extended Steelers lead three minutes from the end, with fans celebrating his hat trick by throwing caps onto the ice.

Although the game was sewn up at this point, the rivalry between the teams continued with Tait and Richardson getting two minutes each for holding and roughing respectively.

Steelers rubbed salt in the wounds one more time when a minute after Dowd’s hat trick, Talbot scored his second of the night, wrapping up the game 6-3.

This was an important win for mid-table Sheffield, who have a lot of work to do if they want to win silverware this season.