Return of the Colin Shields Off-Season Blog

Posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

Hi everyone, I suppose this is the first installment of the off season blog like I had last summer. Hockey is almost over for me this season as we are just finishing up in Poland at the World Championships with the Great Britain team.

This year the tournament has been a lot of fun with some good hockey although we have had some mixed results. This year there are 5 Giants on the team, Shane Johnson, David Phillips, G Walton and Stevie Lyle and myself. I think that all the boys have performed well so far and have done our team and country proud.

For Shane this is the first year he has been a part of the program and he has performed very well and has been that steady d man we have been missing for the last few years. I guess you can say he is officially a Brit now!

After the tournament I am returning to Belfast, where I am going to be living for the summer. I have a new room mate this summer, maybe some of you have heard of him, Dave Phillips! This will be my first experience living with Dave and it is going to be a summer of many laughs I am sure. I am not sure if I am planning on working this summer or not.

Hopefully I will just play lots of poker, get out on the golf course at least 3 times a week, and yes Coach make sure we get to the gym lots as well! I have heard many mixed reviews about the Belfast summer weather, but I did grow up in Glasgow so I have an idea what I am in for!

There are still some of the boys in town still, I think Paul and Andrew who are on the school program at Ulster are in town for at least another month, so it will be good to spend some more time with them before they head back home to Canada.

I never really touched on the end of the season in this blog and probably should say a couple or words about it before I go. I know there were lots of good things said at the banquet about the season and those of you that were fortunate enough to be there heard those. I think when we look back at the season we have to be very happy with how things went. And when I say we, I mean players, coaches, owners and you the fans. We had a very strong showing in the league, won two great trophies and fell short in the playoffs. But 2 out of 4 possible is not bad at all, and if you look at the bigger picture, ourselves and Sheffield were the only teams to win hardware this year! Given the number of games we played and the success we had I think everyone should be very happy and excited looking forward to next year and seasons to come.

In closing, I would like to say thanks to all my team mates for a great season. We really did have any amazing group of players who made coming to work every day a pleasure. All the management, Steve, Todd and the owners showed again why Belfast is the number one place to play in the Elite league and Europe.

Finally, the fan support was just great this year, both at the Odyssey and at the Ice Bowl, we had amazing support all season and I can only hope to see you all back next season!

P.S. I will try and keep the blogs coming over the summer with what Mr Phillips and I are up to!

Shieldsy