Ice Ice Baby

If you’re a New Zealander living in Taiwan, I’d recommend signing up to the New Zealanders (Kiwis) in Taiwan Facebook Group. From time to time useful organized souls post details of upcoming kiwi events in Taiwan, such as ANZCham sundowner events. ANZCham= Australia New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (http://www.anzcham.org.tw).



This week, the New Zealand U18 Ice Hockey Team were in town to participate in the International Ice Hockey Federation Div III competition (http://www.iihf.com). I was unaware of this until the game roster was posted on the Facebook group website (many thanks!) but once informed I turned up for the first game in the tournament held this afternoon between New Zealand and Australia.

Bear in mind that I have never in my life watched an ice hockey game. It had been so long that I’d even set foot inside an ice skating rink that I only thought to grab a jersey for the cooler temperature as I was heading out the door. Needless to say, I’d never visited Tapei Stadium before, but the facility to my eyes was first rate and well maintained. Also, entrance was free. Bonus!

When I walked inside, the ice smoothing machine was hard at work only minutes before the match, the event banner was hanging up on the far end wall, and the officials were settling into their sideline spot at the computer table:



And the five flags of the participating teams hung on the wall at one end of the rink; Australia, Chinese Taipei, New Zealand, South Africa and Mongolia:



As I try to give a description of how the game proceeded, please bear in mind – I know nothing about the rules, and about every 5 seconds I cringed at players full body slamming, skating full bore into a wall and spectacularly going skates-up on the ice. The New Zealander supporters were far out numbered by the Auzzie supporters, but it was great to see all the parents who had flown out from New Zealand to watch their sons play.

First the Kiwis came out for a quick lap around their half of the court:



Huddled in front of the goal – either having a last minute pep talk, or fighting over which night market was first on the list – who can tell from the sidelines!



Then both teams lined up to face off before the game kicked off:



Once the game got underway, it all got a little unclear. Lots of sin-binning, lots of breaks to change players, lots of narrowly averted goals (thumbs up to NZ’s goalies who were put hard to work from the get go), lots of elbows, tangling of sticks, falling over – even a broken stick. I had no idea what was going on, so I just kept yelling – Go NZ, Let’s go NZ, You can do it NZ, (“insert encouraging words here that avoid the fact I have no idea what exactly I’m encouraging the players to do”) NZ!!! P.s. my throat is sore.

Our boys gave it a good effort, although the end result was a substantial win for the Auzzie team. After the game, the teams gathered for a sportsman-like shake-the-hand down the line:



If you can get along for a match, it’ll be worth it to support our boys in black. The rest of the games are at the following times (copied from the Facebook group):

28 February, 2009 (Sat)
16:00 Tapei Ice Rink 3 AUS vs. RSA
19:00 Tapei Ice Rink 4 TPE vs. NZL

2 March, 2009 (Mon)
16:00 Tapei Ice Rink 5 AUS vs. MGL
19:00 Tapei Ice Rink 6 NZL vs. RSA

3 March, 2009 (Tue)
16:00 Tapei Ice Rink 7 MGL vs. NZL
19:00 Tapei Ice Rink 8 RSA vs. TPE

5 March, 2009 (Thu)
16:00 Tapei Ice Rink 9 RSA vs. MGL
19:00 Tapei Ice Rink 10 AUS vs. TPE
21:30 Tapei Ice Rink Closing & Awards Ceremony

Finally, what you’ve all been waiting for: game shots! Capping off this
post is a (very shakey sorry - especially near the beginning where we thought we'd scored a goal but didn't and the camera went everywhere - I may have been both jumping and screaming at the time, uncomfirmed rumour) video of random footage from the game, and the few of my pictures that didn’t come out blurry: