the nottingham arena was a cauldron of fans, and one of the noisiest ones in the league, and their beloved panthers were losing 3-2 to my high flying cardiff devils, newly promoted from the league below, and currently surprising the whole of british ice hockey by riding high at the top of this league, which had never seen such an ascent before, and the attention winning so much was bringing us on the road was intoxicating, everyone wanted to stop us.
every arena was full when they played us, and every crowd seemed to cheer, shout, scream louder than i’d ever heard before.
but we kept winning.
we were in a rich vein of form.
and 1990 belonged to us.
as the tall slim nottingham panthers forward, gavin fraser intercepted a pass just on the red halfway line, he had a breakaway on my undefended goal, my team mates were all caught in the panthers half of the rink.
fraser couldn’t believe his luck, and he sprinted towards me all alone in my goal.
unexpectedly, i leapt into action, and skated out, approximately 15ft to cut the angle down, goalkeeping 101, always cut the angle down.
the closer you are to the player, the less of the goal he can see.
the ice sprayed up, as i stopped at speed, and started to skate backwards with the super fast moving fraser heading like a proverbial steam train toward my net.
my net.
to be defended at all costs.
the panthers crowd were on their feet.
the noise was deafening.
but i heard nothing.
i was in the zone.
i was doing what i had spent thousands of hours training for.
the speed he was skating at was a sprint, and the chasing defensemen were at least 30 feet behind him.
man v man.
player v goalie.
two possible outcomes.
the net bulges, and the red light goes on behind me, as a reminder that i’ve made a mistake at work.
or.
he misses his opportunity.
now the science behind this for me is that he is under more pressure than me.
he has to take action.
action that beats me.
all i have to do is react to his action.
i’m ahead on points already.
come on big guy try to beat me.
he sped toward me and decided to shoot.
top shelf.
where mumma keeps the peanut butter.
my left arm shot up to intercept the vulcanised rubber puck.
and my leather catching glove felt it make contact, right in the pocket.
the arena screamed.
the travelling devils fans cheered, and fraser smashed his stick on the barrier behind the goal.
the ref blew his whistle for a face-off and collected the puck from me, as i gently tossed it up the air for him, the theatre was not wasted on me.
i was in the richest vein of form of my career, and after the game as i emerged. from our victorious dressing room, alex dampier the great britain coach, walked toward me.
“great game smitty, i’ll be sending you a letter to join us.”
i had made the senior gb squad to play in the world championships.
“thanks alex” and i grinned all the way home, slept, and woke with the same grin on my face.
i am feeling the same today.
i am in a rich vein of form.
i recently did my first talk of this year, to a room full of ceo’s in a breakfast network meeting, which whilst being physically shaky, i got my story out, received some lovely comments, and have just been asked to speak to three more groups in april, may and june.
i tell you this, not to boast, but to show that whatever your personal circumstances, you can still do cool stuff, and make an impact on others lives if you push yourself, and step outside your comfort zone.
so that is 6 talks formally booked in q1, i’m ahead of my goal of doing 12 this year, which is a great start, and the grin is slowly appearing.
the other thing that i’m excited about is, with two weeks to go before we close registrations for our ultra fun run, we only need 1747 more people to reach our target, and i think we can do it, and you can do it remotely if you can’t make it to cardiff, or if you just wanna support you can buy a pay it forward ticket here.
