STORM BLITZ ISSUE #22 Friday 7 February 1997 Storm Blitz has had it's 100th registeration and there are now 105! These are split down as follows : 89 Manchester Storm fans and 1 each from the following teams : Whitley Warriors, Milton Keynes, Kingston Hawks, Basingstoke Bison, Sheffield Steelers, Telford Tigers and Simcoe Storm (Canada). The remaining 9 registrations are currently "unknown" and I'll find them out hopefully shortly. Storm Blitx has now been in existance for 2 months and has now had 22 issues in that time. If you have any comments on Storm Blitz, please feel free to e-mail inter.the.storm@poboxes.com any time. ---- In this issue : * Stormforce News update * Arena to get McDonalds and a pub * Battles On Ice * Radio 5 to do Final live? * Bison beat Storm 6-3 * Steelers beaten in Ayr & Bees lose * Japan beat Basingstoke and Cardiff * Storm lose 5-4 to Cobras * Downie on the bench * Injury update * Finnie & M. Smith on Kiss 102 * Roller Hockey at the Arena? * Panthers to appeal over Laxdal decision * Inter The Storm news * Latest Superleague table * Forthcoming Storm fixtures * Next on TV & Radio * Get back issues of Storm Blitz * How to unsubscribe to Storm Blitz --------------------------------------------------- > STORMFORCE NEWS UPDATE The Stormforce AGM has changed its date from Sun 13 April to Sun 27 April. The venue is the Millenium Suite on the top floor of the Kippax Stand, Manchester City Football Club, Manchester. The event begins at 1.00pm. The official reason for the date change is that the ground may be holding an FA Cup semi-final game or that there would be a distraction if Man City were playing in the semi-final (hmmm!). The event is open to all Stormforce members and will see the elections/re-elections of the Stormforce committee. John Lawless or Dayrl Lipsey will be giving the team's opinions and Dave Biggar will be representing Ogdens. The Presentation Evening at the Nynex Arena on Sunday 30 March will begin at 7.00pm for a 7.30 buffet. Tickets are on sale at 15.00 to adult Stormforce members (18 and over ONLY) from the Stormforce desk at the Arena. There is a sample buffet menu at the Stormforce desk if you want to know what the food will be like. The next Stormforce Committe Meeting will take place soon (on Tuesday - it could be a week on Tuesday, I have forgotten which!). Dave Biggar will be in attendance. The results of this meeting will be announced. The next issue of the Stormforce Newsletter will contain a feature on the infamous "Lawless Cuts Editorial" issue and included will be the views of Storm fans (and other fans if relevent). The whole story is at http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/3859/lawless.html and the comments received so far are at http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/3859/fans.html - so if you want your view to be heard and to be considered for publication in the newsletter, send them to inter.the.storm@poboxes.com or sign the Guestbook on the pages. There are plans to launch an on-line registration system for Internet users who wish to join or rejoin Stormforce. The exact details have not been confirmed yet but it is likely to be a form filled in with the applicant's details. This will be passed to Stormforce who will contact the applicant. The registration will then only take effect when payment is received. If this is feasable (and works!) it should be in place during the summer break. > ARENA TO GET McDONALDS AND A PUB To go with the Arena itself, the Arena 7 cinema, the booking office and Skate Attack, there is soon to be a McDonalds and a pub opening in the "square". This will make the area almost a leisure centre with fans staying in the vicinity of the Arena for a significant time before and after a game if they wish. > BATTLES ON ICE The Granada TV programme will finally go ahead on Sat 8 Feb with the programme being titled Battles On Ice. It lasts for an hour (2.50-3.50pm), not 30 minutes as was expected. The presenter is Bear van Beers and the game being shown is Manchester Storm v Cardiff Devils from last Sunday. The commentators will be Paul Ferguson and Richard Boprey. The director of the programme is Hugh Bevan of BBC Wales fame and used to present Face Off on BBC Wales on 1 a couple of years ago. The Storm match night programme for Wednesday's Newcastle game said that Granada TV are hoping to attract 10 million viewers and eventually it could go nationwide. 10 MILLION! I'm not sure where they got that figure from - it must be an accumulated figure between now and the end of the season, and even that must be optomistic as active football fans will be at football games and rugby league fans will be watching the Saints v Wigan game on BBC1 surely! Going nationwide is interesting - so does this mean that the ITV network has actually officially got Superleague highlight rights? I was under the impression that the local TV companies had to do a deal by themselves and Granada were in the running for European League highlights which never materialised. > RADIO 5 TO DO FINAL LIVE? With BBC Radio 5 Live believed to be considering Saturday Superleague commentary games next season, it has been annouced that there will possibly be full live commentary on the Superleague Final at the Nynex on Sat 29 March. The game will face-off at 8.00pm for SKY TV and so this timing is ideal for Radio 5 as the football phone-in 6-0-6 runs until 8.00. The previous week's semi-finals at the Nynex will be covered with live reports. Bob Ballard is expected to be commentating and reporting on the games. Radio Sheffield is expected to follow Sheffield Steelers with commentary on their away games - home games also if they are on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday and commentary on the semis and the final if Steelers get that far. > BISON BEAT STORM 6-3 On Thursday night, Storm travelled to Basingstoke in a bid to help their cause of not finishing bottom of the Superleague. Playing current bottom club Bison could only have been beneficial to Storm, but they lost the game 6-3 with two Bison goals from Merv Priest and so are kept off the bottom due to their record of having won one more game than Basingstoke. > STEELERS BEATEN IN AYR & BEES LOSE Sheffield Steelers's chances of landing the big prize of the first ever Superleague championship was dented again as Ayr Scottish Eagles beat them 4-0. Storm have the chance to do the same on Thursday 13 Feb when Steelers come back to the Nynex. In the other game on Thursday, Nottingham Panthers beat Bracknell Bees 4-2 in the Hive. > JAPAN BEAT BASINGSTOKE AND CARDIFF Japan ended their short GB tour with wins against Basingstoke by 3-0 on Tuesday, while beating Cardiff Devils 5-3 on Wednesday. > STORM LOSE 5-4 TO COBRAS This was another close game that Storm should have won. I missed the whole of an incident packed first period as my tickets were left at home and it wasn't pointed out until I had got half way to Manchester, so my journey time was doubled and I missed the first half an hour of the action. In that period, Newcastle took the lead after 2 minutes but Brad Rubachuk equalised after 7 minutes. Two minutes later, Cobras went back in front on the powerplay. Two minutes later on 11 minutes, Dale Jago, awarded Man of the Match later, scored the equaliser. The first period ended 2-2 and the game set up nicely. Three minutes into the second period, Jago scored again to give Storm the lead for the first time in the game. But three minutes later on the powerplay Cobras equalsied. On 34 minutes on yet another powerplay, Newcastle re-took the lead. The third period saw Storm get back on level terms with a Craig Woodcroft goal in the 41st minute. With 6 minutes remaining and overtime a possibility, Cobras scored the winning goal. > DOWNIE ON THE BENCH Old times returned to the Nynex as Colin Downie was on the bench for Storm as their stand-in goalie after Nathan Wood had to return to Cardiff. Downie didn't ice, but got a great reception from the crowd. > INJURY UPDATE Eric Raymond should return in time for the Nottingham Panthers game on Sunday 9 February. David Smith has already returned to action after his injury and Bart Vanstaalduinen should return in approx 2 weeks time - in time for the play-offs. > FINNIE & M. SMITH ON KISS 102 John Finnie and Martin Smith will be live on KISS 102 FM on Saturday 8 February between 3.00 and 4.00pm on "Kiss Sports", the Saturday afternoon sports programme presented by Paul Anthony. Listeners can phone in with questions for the players on 0161 228 1102. > ROLLER HOCKEY AT THE ARENA It was suggested last season that there would be a Roller Hockey team playing out of the Nynex Arena during the summer break and a Roller Hockey representative has been viewing the arena with a view to taking up the idea. However, there are currently only regional leagues and so other teams must be set up to form a viable league. This could be very interesting as there would (I assume) be no franchise areas to worry about. This could mean a league involving teams such as Sheffield, Leeds (not this year obviously), Blackburn, Bury (there is a roller team playing out of Bury already) etc etc. If a national league cannot be set up, a North West league should be able to provide 8 teams I would have thought. But then we have the problem of the players and whether it would be a spectacle worth bothering about. As soon as there is any news on this front, it will be announced here. > PANTHERS TO APPEAL OVER LAXDAL DECISION Nottingham Panthers are to appeal over the decision to ban Derek Laxdal for this taking of illegal substances that it is claimed he took when he had cold and actually drunk some of his daughter's cough medicine. > INTER THE STORM NEWS There's been one or two "problems" with the pages this week as I decided to be lazy and update the Web stats by resetting it to 0 and amending the link to change the colour of the information on the page and adding new information in it. To do this I would normally just edit the source code and re-send the file. However, not having the source code to hand I used an online editor to change it and then sent it straight away. I didnit have time to check, but the changes were so minor that it shouldn't have affected anything else. The problem was that the editor decided to reset all the HTML tags with numbers in (eg. <....border=0>) changing the numbers to ? instead. This caused no end of problems as the front page is designed around a table that you cannot see the lines of, and the width of each column was set to some thin setting meaning that everyhting was squashed. Anyway, it is fixed now, but the Web stats links that I was doing in the first place are not sorted yet, but they are still logging information. All the pages have been updated regarding match information plus the MISCONDUCT! pages and two new pages with Canadian Junior Hockey news and NHL news. All the sound clips from the Storm v Bracknell Bees page are now on the Sounds Like Storm page. There are 21 of them and if you've heard some or all of them, please let me know what you think. I know they are poor quality, but do you think it's worth doing again? Also, let me know if there is any problem hearing them as I haven;t had chance to try to download them yet. > LATEST SUPERLEAGUE TABLE Pl W D OL NL +/- Points Cardiff Devils 35 25 3 0 7 +66 53 Sheffield Steelers 35 22 3 2 8 +34 49 Newcastle Cobras 34 16 2 5 11 +8 39 Ayr Scottish E 35 16 6 0 13 -1 38 Nottingham Panths 36 17 1 2 16 +2 37 Bracknell Bees 34 12 2 0 20 -28 26 Manchester Storm 35 11 2 1 21 -47 25 Basingstoke Bison 36 10 3 2 21 -34 25 Up to and including games on 2 February > FORTHCOMING STORM FIXTURES SUN 09 FEB - Manchester Storm v Nottingham Panthers, Superleague, 6.00 face off. THU 13 FEB - Manchester Storm v Sheffield Steelers, Superleague, 7.30 face off. SAT 15 FEB - Nottingham Panthers v Manchester Storm, Superleague, 7.00 face off. SUN 16 FEB - Manchester Storm v Bracknell Bees, Superleague, 6.00 face off. THU 20 FEB - Cardiff Devils v Manchester Storm, Superleague, 8.00 face off. SAT 22 FEB - Bracknell Bees v Manchester Storm, Superleague, 6.00 face off. SUN 23 FEB - Manchester Storm v Sheffield Steelers, Superleague, 6.00 face off. > NEXT ON TV & RADIO SAT 08 JAN - Granada TV - Manchester Storm - Hour long programme featuring highlights of Storm v Cardiff (2 Feb) plus news and competitions - 2.50-3.50pm SAT 08 JAN - Kiss 102 (Manchester) - Kiss Sports - Interviews and phone-in with John Finnie and Martin Smith as guests - 3.00-4.00pm SAT 08 JAN - SKY SPORTS - Ice Hockey LIVE - Live coverage of a Superleague game - not sure which yet - 6.30-9.30pm SAT 08 JAN - SKY SPORTS - Ice Hockey - Recorded coverage of the Superleague game shown live earlier in the evening - not sure which yet - 11.00-1.30pm SAT 08 JAN - BBC RADIO 5 LIVE 693/909AM - Night Extra - results and round-up of the night's games along with all the day's other sports results - 11.30pm-12.00 MON 10 JAN - BBC GMR 95.1/104.6FM - Drivetime - Interview with Storm representative - 5.55pm MON 10 JAN - HTV WALES - Ice Hockey Superleague - Extensive highlights of one of the weekend's games involving Cardiff Devils and brief highlights of any other Cardiff games that weekend - 11.35pm-12.35 WED 12 JAN - BBC RADIO SHEFFIELD 104.1FM - The Ice Line - Sheffield Steelers phone-on - 7.00-8.00pm THU 13 JAN - BBC RADIO LANCASHIRE 95.5/103.9FM - Grass Roots - Feature on Blackburn Hawks - approx 7.45pm FRI 14 JAN - BBC GMR 95.1/104.6FM - Friday Sport - Interview/Feature on Manchester Storm along with other sports - 7.00-10.00pm SAT 15 JAN - Granada TV - Manchester Storm - Hour-long programme featuring highlights of Storm games plus news and competitions - approx 3.00-4.00pm SAT 15 JAN - SKY SPORTS - Ice Hockey LIVE - Live coverage of a Superleague game - not sure which yet - 6.30-9.30pm SAT 15 JAN - SKY SPORTS - Ice Hockey - Recorded coverage of the Superleague game shown live earlier in the evening - not sure which yet - 11.00-1.30pm SAT 15 JAN - BBC RADIO 5 LIVE 693/909AM - Night Extra - results and round-up of the night's games along with all the day's other sports results - 11.30pm-12.00 > GET BACK ISSUES OF STORM BLITZ All previous issues of Storm Blitz are still available. If you didn't get them, or want them again, send an e-mail to inter.the.storm@poboxes.com and let me know which you want and I'll forward them on to you. > HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE TO STORM BLITZ Easy! Send an e-mail to inter.the.storm@poboxes.com telling me that you don't want Storm Blitz any more. Also use this address if you wish to change e-mail addresses or if you have any comments. *** END OF STORM BLITZ ISSUE #22 *** INTER THE STORM can be accessed at: http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/3859/storm.html ------------------------------ This space could be yours! If you're interested in having your advert here, send an e-mail to simon.sm@zetnet.co.uk ------------------------------