Dramatic scenes down on the Isle of Wight this weekend. My own personal sporting history was made as for the first time a hockey team I play on actually won something! Look..


And the trophy even looks Stanley Cup shaped! Fantastic. So it's the name of the Westminster Statesmen that will be the first to be engraved on the Wight Dinos Anniversary cup. Woo Ha!

It was a great weekend of hockey and sunny seaside weather. Like Arsenal we proved to be unbeatable. First up on Saturday morning we played the Nationwide Knights from Swindon and skated away to an impressive 5-3 win. Then on Saturday afternoon we played the hosts, the Wight Dinos and stunned them with a 5-2 win. That meant that come what may we were in the final and the winner of Swindon / IOW on Sunday morning would be our opponent. Our one game on Sunday morning was against the Basingstoke Hyenas and after a slow start we pulled away to win 5-1. Swindon put out the hosts so it was a rematch at the end of the day with the Knights. This was an excellent game and for the first time all weekend we went behind to an early goal. But we got back into the game and soon pulled ahead. The final score was 6-3 and when the hooter went to end the game we piled onto the ice and leapt on Graham our goalie to celebrate. (Luckily I'd seen this done on the telly so I knew thats what you do when you win something in Ice Hockey). Graham was named the best Goalie of the tournament and I got the prize for best forward!

(thanks to Tash for this immortal image)

In the end I think I got 6 goals and 8 assists in our 4 games.

Here are some more pics:
- The Finalists
- Champio-nes
- Graham and his bling!
- John hoists the trophy
- Man in West Ham shirt lifts trophy (if only that happened more often)
- Me with my prize
- JW gone Cup crazy
- Michal hoists the cup aloft
- Chuffed supporters (Thanks for all the cheering!)
- JM with the silverware
- Graham's Atkins diet was a startling success
- Dawn's sunset

Thanks very much to Dawn for taking pics during the game. She even got one of my goals on video! So for the first time on aTeaButNoE - moving images!! Gol.zip(770Kb)

The other good news is that Dad is out of hospital and back at home. Go Dad!