Surely it was a wise and charitable investment. Would you rather have seen Canadian immigrants having to live on the streets, you heartless swine.
I can assure you the ice hockey never got close to £43 million pounds worth of funding. It doesn't matter if it's from selling shares or collecting rates, it's still public money spent on sports teams. For what it's worth I don't actually agree with how the council used to prop up a failing ice hockey team, the new team is much more sustainable albeit they have to play in a lower division. I think all the local teams have benefitted from the councils intervention at one time or another, Hull City and Hull FC got a new stadium, Hull KR were given land and later a buy out for their ground and the ice hockey team has had various hand outs over the years, I don't think any team can complain.
So why say they didn't get £43million of funding? Which just happened to be the price of the KC development. They didn't get 10, 20, 30 or 85million either. Your remark was totally pointless.
As you were everyone, as you were. It seems Ice Hockey has a play off thing, so it's still all to play for. Having come second in the league by just one point, it's now play off time. Pirates were due to play Blackburn in the second leg of the quarter finals on Sunday, but it was called off due to the weather, presumably a frozen pitch, but they that seemingly means they go through as they were 12-1 up from the first leg. They're in the Northern semi finals at the weekend, playing Telford away on the Saturday, and at Home on the Sunday, with the reward for success, being sent to Coventry for the final. From what I can gather, there's no promotion, as the next league up is open to anyone that pays £1 million a season. That means this is for top spot in the semi-pro league. Good luck to the Pirates, they're largely local lads holding down full time jobs.
Ahh Ice Hockey ... played it for many a year and used to watch it every week at the Ice Arena .... saw someone mention Dale Lambert, .... hard to believe that was 30 years ago that he played for the Seahawks ... Full arena every weekend , great games to watch with some class players. I also remember the Olympic qualifying being held at the Hull Arena (I handed out the gold medals at it as I was a member of the Humberside U14's team at the time and we all were representatives of the venue) I'm sure someone has already clarified re the name etc ... the reason they have been called the Seahawks, Hawks, Stingrays, and now pirates is basically the company that the name is linked to has gone bust over time as the council washed its hands off the club I think mid 90's when the last season of council backing (they replaced the benches around the arena for the seats they have now as a parting "gift". This resulted in ticket prices going up 100% at least on that first season after ... after that playing in the top league was unsustainable due to the small arena and dwindling interest ... the only thing we had going for it was the best junior program in the country which also soon rapidly declined as the kids went to other clubs due to their stature. The current model fits pretty much about right, semi pro and affordable as well as a core of local lads playing and being proud to wear the shirt. The only thing could be when the new Ice arena is approved/built ... we could be in a bad place once again with the council (although it could be a catalyst for the growth of the sport again)
