Professional Hockey

Well, last Friday night after work Michaela and I met up with a couple of South African auditors from Deloittes (they had been auditing my work and finished 3 days prior). We met up and made our way via metro to O2 Arena which has a metro 30 seconds walk from the front door which is awesome.

We were there to watch Slavia Praha vs Liberec White Lions which was a top of the ladder vs the 3rd bottom (apparently no one told Liberec they were meant to lose). We had some seats in right next to the Slavia fans and nestled in to watch the game. It was immediately obvious the difference between Michaela's brothers 2nd division team and these Extraliga teams. I guess thats the difference between semi and fully professional. Anyway the end result was 7:1 to Liberec which certainly was an upset. The cost for the Liberec team was heavy! 2 of their players were helped from the rink after both receiving a puck in the face at about 140km/h. It was atrocious, blood every where as these poor fellows face were nearly caved in by pucks. It provided a break in play as the cleaners had to come out and scrape all the blood off the ice with something that resembled a large chisel.

The play has stopped and 3 medical staff are attending to a players face

2 interesting parts of the evening was the small blimp was flying around inside the arena with advertising on its side (very American) and the supporters. The difference between Czech and Australian supporters is that Czech supporters actually support their teams without exception. This is very different to the fair weather supporters you see in Australian sport.

At the end of the game, after being THUMPED the Slavia players came and sat on the ice in front of the supporters while the supporters sang to them. I asked Michaela what they were saying, as I was expecting "You guys F***ING SUCK", but they were singing something along the lines of "we support you if you win or lose and we will be back here next week to watch you play again regardless of the result". Once they had finished the players tapped their sticks on the ice to thank the crowd for coming and left. It was very nice to hear this from supporters after growing up in Sydney were we would have sung "we support you when you win but you can bugger off if you lose"

It's a pity this doesn't happen in Australia :(