All sports are based on rivalries - match ups between old enemies, arch-nemeses who know each other inside out, based on geography or competition. Being a Sunderland fan, we have our rivalry with Newcastle. Liverpool and Everton are even closer. Then you have Man Utd and Arsenal in the early 2000s. In hockey, the 'Biggest Rivalry In The Country' is that between our Sheffield Steelers, and those wonderful folk from Nottingham.
Over the years, lots of blood has been spilt, trophies have been shared and split, and fanbases have formed battlelines in the name of the Steelers/Panthers rivalry. Yet right now, fans from both sides are struggling to get motivated and psyched for a game against our biggest rivals. Why is that?
The majority of this new found apathy comes from the conference system. When you are guaranteed to play 8 games a season against any team, the ferocity and emotions are going to become a little watered down by game 8 - especially in the more modern game where blood isn't being spilt and benches aren't getting cleared quite so often. You can add to this the fact that we were in the same Challenge Cup group as them, and that makes it a minimum of 10 games. Then we have them again in the semi final. Make that 12. There's the potential of getting them in the quarter finals of the playoffs. That would be 14 games against them. Ridiculous. Sunderland have had Southampton in the cups twice this season, and on top of the 2 league games, it seems like a silly amount to play one team. We don't even have a rivalry with them!
Another factor is that Steelers/Panthers games don't have the same spark as they used to. I'm presuming everyone has seen the bench clearance video from 2001. The fights, the chirps, the pure hatred that used to come across - even when I started in 2008. It's just not there now. Once a season, something happens that ignites a bit of temper - the Wilson slash on Ferguson, Henley jumping Spencer. Part of this can be attributed to the face we play each other so often, which dilutes these incidents and lets both camps get the issue out of their system quicker rather than sitting and stewing on it. It can also be put down to the way the game is changing, especially over here.
The physical, 'dirty' stuff is dying out in the UK, and when it rears its head, it is stamped down on, hard. Look at how the Skydome Handshake Shambles was dealt with - bans for the instigators. The Elite League clearly does not want that sort of thing happening any more. The more intense hits are being called. Headshots are (rightly) being dealt with. The intense things that people consider to make a rivalry are simply not allowed these days. Has it made the rivalry less intense? Probably. But in that case, every other rivalry in ice hockey must have gone down too.
There's a trail of thought coming from Nottingham fans that their biggest rivalry is with Coventry. The Blaze's meatheads try something with the Panthers' paid monkeys, and everyone has a scuffle. So it is indeed a growing concern, and thats wonderful that they've found a new playmate. But what of us?
We seem to have occasional tiffs with other teams. Belfast are currently enjoying rubbing it into 'Big Budget Doug' that he left them to win the league with a bigger budget, and Paul Adey is showing him how its done in the O. Since Finner took his Steel legion to Glasgow, a little bit of something has developed - especially when they came down to the Arena and won. But our rivalry with the Blaze has died down since Coventry stopped winning things, and Cardiff's fall from grace has killed that one. We keep coming back to Nottingham.
It is the game we sell the most tickets for. It is the game that sells out the NIC. Ask a Steeler who our biggest rival is, of course it's Nottingham. Maybe if Hull were more of a perceived threat they'd stand a chance of being our biggest rivals, but there's too much of people seeing them as 'Plucky Little Hull,'
What can be done to revive the rivalry? A few things. The same things that can be done to revive the league. I'll get to them next week.
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