Well, he has done it again! Another look back at the fascinating
turbulent history of British ice hockey
- this time casting a light on the various clubs that have played at Solihull
over the years.
To order your copy, drop Stuart a line to: stuartlatham65@sky.com
I actually have a lot of personal Solihull Barons related
memories although most of them have come from supporting the opposition team and,
as such, I didn’t think they were relevant for contributing to Stuart’s book. But they are certainly
worthy of a mention here.
More recent adherents to British ice hockey might not be
aware but the Solihull Barons were one of the top teams in the country in the
late 1980s playing for 5 seasons in the Heineken League Premier Division and
regularly reaching the latter stages of the Autumn Cup and play off
competitions.
And, unlike the modern landscape of the sport where
basically any new team with enough money can decide which league they want to
play in, the Barons did it the hard way and worked their way up the leagues,
starting in Division 2 – which is where I come in.
According to “Wikimaps” , it is 82 miles from Peterborough
to Solihull and, back in the 1980s, the roads weren’t very good across country
so it used to take quite a long time to get there. Even so, due to most of the other opposition
teams at the time being in Scotland or the North East or on the South Coast,
Peterborough v Solihull was classed as a “local derby” and a huge rivalry was
built up on both sides.
The Pirates started up in 1982 and were placed in British
League Division 2 along with the Barons. Both teams had bigger budgets than the
other sides and both had impressive imported players so they were the top teams
in that first season, with the Barons finishing top of the table and the Pirates
second.
The league was restructured under the Heineken sponsorship
for the following 1983/84 season and, with both the Barons and Pirates
being placed in the new Heineken League
Division 1, that fierce rivalry continued to flourish.
If my memory serves me well, the first time I saw a Solihull
team play was probably against Cambridge University - who used to play their
home games at the Peterborough rink - and this would have been a Division 3
encounter with the Barons’ second team, the Solihull Buffaloes, during the
1982/83 season.
I also saw a few Peterborough Ravens women’s games around
that time and their main rivals at the time were the Solihull Vixens, so I may
well have seen them play too, but my recall – almost 40 years later - is a bit
vague on that.
Anyway, I am fairly sure that the first time I saw the
Solihull Barons was the Autumn Cup defeat in November 1983 which was the first
season that I decided to watch all the Pirates home games and become a full
time fan.
The Pirates lost that one 4-7 at home and, having also lost
the away game in the cup as well, this set up a real grudge encounter for the
league games that were to follow, with both the Pirates and Barons in
contention for the Division 1 title along with Southampton Vikings who would eventually
go on to finish top of the table.
One particular Solihull occurrence that is etched in my
memory is the home league game on 8th January 1984 which was the
scene of the infamous “Barry Skrudland incident”.
The Pirates lost the game 6-8 but the main talking point was
when, early in the game, the Barons’ import Skrudland, older – and, presumably,
less talented - brother of long term NHL player and Stanley Cup winner Brian
Skrudland, injured Peterborough’s Rob Carnegie with a vicious check to the head
which left a huge pool of blood on the ice and the big defenceman being rushed
to hospital needing facial stitches.
After a long delay for the ice to be cleaned up and
discipline to be handed out, Skrudland
was ejected from the game and marked his departure by throwing all the spare
sticks onto the ice – and a couple of curling stones as well.
This wouldn’t happen these days, what with strenuous safety
measures put in place to combat concussion injuries – not to mention incredibly
long waiting times in A&E – but Carnegie rushed back from the hospital all
patched and was able to rejoin the game, picking up the Man of the Match award
for his troubles.
(As a matter of fact there is brief footage from this game
on YouTube – you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ1lrM_qwXM. I can actually be seen in the crowd at
0.35. It’s not very clear but I know
where I used to sit at the time...)
Skrudland picked up a long ban from the BIHA as a result of
the incident and never played in this country again. That helped to fuel the
animosity between the two teams and a comprehensive Pirates win away in
Solihull on 19th February (4-11, I was there!) did little to dampen
any flames.
The following season (84/85) the Barons and the Pirates were
both battling for honours in Division 1 again and the rivalry was just as intense. The Pirates won away in Solihull just before
Christmas 13-6 and that set up a huge return encounter in Peterborough at the end
of February. If the Pirates were to win that game, they’d pretty much sew up
the league title.
It is almost impossible to put into words how BIG that match
was but even now, 38 years later, the thought of it makes my skin tingle and I come
over all nostalgic and emotional. There
was so much interest and anticipation that, in order to be able to get a ticket
, you had to go to the Pirates v Glasgow Dynamos game the week before – played on a
less popular Saturday night – to get a voucher to be able to attend.
On the day of the game, there was the hugest crowd I had
ever seen queuing around the rink to get in. The hundreds of visiting Solihull
fans arrived in coach after coach after coach and were let in through a
separate entrance around the back to avoid further crowd congestion.
Inside the rink I ended up standing against the wall on top of
an overturned crate in the corner by the vending machine next to the exit towards the bar stairs along
with my then girlfriend , my friend from school Alan Platt and Robin Colton.
The game had everything you could hope for in a big occasion
– drama, excitement, goals.
ITV’s Gary Newbon was on the bench with the Barons and they
had “Dancing Dean” Vogelsgesang doing his ridiculously over the top goal celebration
routines.
Unfortunately for us, there were too many Dancing Dean moments
and not enough Pirates celebration moments as the Barons won the game 7-10.
Here again, there is some video footage from this game (lovingly
restored) on YouTube so you can see the size of the crowd, how great the atmosphere
was, and a bit of what happened - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6AbJ-ZrWc
The video includes great views of Shannon Hope in his first season
of British ice hockey (he’s wearing #2 for the Pirates) and also the late Micky
Curry refereeing.
That result left the two teams neck and neck in the title race
but the wheels came off the Solihull challenge when they lost a bad tempered game
away to Blackpool Seagulls – and Glenn Skidmore apparently did a “Slapshot-esque”
striptease on the ice after having been ejected from the game.
The same night, the Pirates won 26-2 away to Grimsby
Buffaloes and that win secured them the league title.
The Barons and Pirates played in different divisions for two
seasons but the rivalry continued through cup games and challenge matches. They met up regularly again in the Premier
Division but over time Peterborough became the better team and in 1991, the
Barons suffered severe financial troubles and were forced to drop out of British
ice hockey’s top division.
One more date in the Pirates v Barons rivalry sticks out in
my mind and it’s a game that I didn’t actually go to. It was Tuesday 12th March 1991 and
the Pirates had already qualified for the end of season play offs for the first
time ever. The date clashed with a football match for Peterborough United who
were still in the chase for promotion after 12 years in the Division Four
doldrums. With the ice hockey match having a later than usual start, due to it
being midweek - and therefore a late finish, all the way over in Bretton – I decided to go to the football match instead which
I could walk to easily.
Unfortunately, the football ended up in a rather disappointing
2-2 draw with Darlington whereas the Pirates game finished with the most incredible
17-2 win after the Baron’s “bad boy” of the season Brent Sapergia had caused
all sorts of trouble and got himself thrown
out of the game.
So there you go. A
lot has changed in British ice hockey over the years – not all for the good,
but don’t get me started on that!
The Peterborough Phantoms now rule the rink at Mallard Road
but they have been in a different division to the Solihull Barons for a long
time now so, if the rivalry still exists, I doubt that it is anything like as intense
as it used to be. It has probably been replaced by other teams that they play
more regularly against.
So, if you have managed to read this far and have found a few
things to be of interest, then you will definitely enjoy reading Stuart Latham’s
new 282 page book Ice Hockey In Solihull.
He doesn’t waffle on anywhere near as much as I do and the book is filled
with fascinating facts, statistics, league tables, results lists and great
photos.
There are also interviews and articles featuring former
players such as Steve Chartrand, Phil Lee and Robert Eley and the book also
looks at the Solihull Vixens women’s team, the Solihull Knights, the Buffaloes,
the Kings and the Blaze.
To order your copy, contact Stuart at: stuartlatham65@sky.com
