Back at the Bison...

...but this time as a Panther!

And also this time with Paul and Nikki (who are fellow official Midlanders who had been promising to come along to the blood-and-violence-fest for a couple of years and have finally got around to it...) and Tina and Chris (who aren't, and hadn't...)

My sports reporting is not brilliant and not really knowing the few rules there appear to be don't make it all any easier to understand, but anyway, first there was an almighty punch-up between two of the players, then they scored and then we did. That's how it ended, and five minutes of fairly fast and furious extra time made no difference, so it was down to penalties. Of which we got more in than they did and that's how you win.

You can't take pictures while they're playing because they move faster than the shutter does and the photos look like this:



...but if you wait till they've won and they get presented (for some reason) with their honorary pack of Fosters, you get them to stand still long enough while they look smug and victorious...



...to get a photo of the whole team.

* Well, the whole team apart from the one who punched a member of the other team in the face and had to go home. Good, wholesome fun.

You can't escape the Irish...

...even if they are Polish, like this one was.



Even at the Guinness Brewery, they didn't have barmen who pulled pints on the move, as he did...

And the wolfhound and the mascot were also Irish...*



(*You can decide which one is the real dog and which is the man dressed up...)

...and that's because London Irish were playing Leeds at the Madejski** Stadium in Reading.

(**You can also decide how you say that out loud...)

Now, I know nothing about rugby, but I'm a quick learner. Here we see a pass...



...a scrum...



...and a line out...



Another first for me as have never been to a rugby match before and much better than watching it all on the TV, although you could do that too...



...and that was the final score, so "Come on you IRISH!!!"
(as everyone was supposed to shout...)

You bet!

A successfully family afternoon! We won £72.50 altogether. I won. Roger won. Susan won. Zoe won (and she's not strictly speaking old enough to bet yet...)

My Dad was the Weakest Link, leaving with nothing...

Come on you BISON!!!!!

That's what you're supposed to shout! I didn't, but Jerry did. Nicky and I tried to look like we didn't know him....

Anyway, the reason he shouted it was that we were at the Ice Hockey at Basingstoke. "Are you home or away?" asked the woman in the ticket booth. "Well, it's the first time we've been," we explained, "so we had better be home."

So, there we were at the ice rink...



(This is what it looked like before the players came on, and is the only photo which isn't blurred...)

...suddenly fans of the Basingstoke Bison. (Not Bisons, for some reason...)

It's a bit difficult to sum up our first experience, but here are a few important things to point out for when you go...

• There is blood. Some bloke on our team got the puck full in the face after about a minute and needed "medical attention"
• It's very fast. It takes about 3 seconds for the action to move from one end of the rink to the other.
• There are loads more players than they need. About 20 per team, but only 6 on the ice at once, meaning lots of people skating off and others leaping over the barriers to replace them. Constantly. Average time on the ice before coming off seemed to be about 45 seconds.
• If the puck comes over the side, you can keep it. If you are conscious.
• It's quite violent. Lots of shoving the opposing team members into the side or legging them over. Even if they don't have the puck.
• There is a DJ. Who plays amusing sound clips denigrating the referees (who are sponsored by SpecSavers) or crowd-rousing mega-anthems - "We Will Rock You", "Holding Out for a Hero", "Let Me Entertain You" and at one point "I'm The Leader of the Gang, I Am", although he obviously thought better of that and took it off quickly.
• You can't take flash photos. Which means they all come out like this:
  

You can see that a player in white and a player in red are just about to have a minor, but nontheless very high-speed, disagreement...

You can get a much better idea of what's going on from these photos from the mobile phone...




(Quite why the cheap, inbuilt camera on a Nokia phone can take better action photos than a Canon Digital IXUS costing considerably more I don't know. Technology continues to baffle.)

For £12 a ticket you really get your money's worth. Especially when they argue about the state of the ice for 20 minutes and then still have to play extra time. We got there at 6 and left just before 10 so it's a full evening. And they make you stand up while they play the national anthem. (National anthems, in fact, as they were playing Cardiff...)

If you don't want to know who won, look away now...

It was a draw 4-4.

And if you want the blow by bloody-blow account, you can read the match report. And if you want to go too, it's off season till September so you're out of luck. But we'll be going back then, so you can come with us if you want... (Paul!)