The Hockey Song

yeah, it's me in glorious hockey look.
yeah, it’s me in glorious hockey look.

OH! The good ol’ Hockey game, is the best game you can name.
And the best game you can name, is the good ol’ Hockey game.

– Stompin’ Tom Connors – The Hockey Song

I’ve walked around with this feeling long enough, time to write it down and let go of it. As some may know of the readers who know me, I’ve been involved with the Eindhoven icehockey team for about five years now. I’m not playing, but first I started up the fansite together with a friend (who later took a much bigger role in that, to his merit making it the thing it became), and later I worked as a PR guy for the team. I’ve used my skills in Social Media and learned through playing with posting times, stats, virality with the facebook and twitter accounts, both having more than 1k natural followers now. My girlfriend made photo’s and my friends were also involved. We had a great time around the ice.

Maybe many people never noticed us or noticed who wrote stuff and all, I don’t know. I’m not out to redeem some glory. This season another club asked for a permit to play this season. This caused a lot of problems, since it’s a team from the same town and it’s kind of a problem for a minor sport to be supported on that scale. You’ll have to much fishing in the same pond going on, specially when there’s barely enough fish to substain one of the parties. The take-over didn’t have much to do with having heart for the game and promoting it, it’s been a clash of ego’s, one group just more blunter, short term thinking and selfish than the other. I’ve worked with that old group for a long time, definitely there’s some ego’s and some self esteem involved there, but also a lot of passion and at the bottom line of those characters was always the importance of the game. They quickly withdrew and gave way to this other group, just to let the things continue. Expertise and help was offered, in an indirect way also mine, but it was discared as useless. That hurt, I know my value nowadays and I know how much I can mean for an organization when they get me on their side. I’ve conquered a lot of fears there and also in my professional field this year. I’m worth something for sure, I don’t doubt myself on that front anymore.

Months of silence followed, strange communications and a lot of negativity from fans and also people involved with the club. The old gang remained respectfully silent, which I would not have been able to. Many times I wanted to post blunt facebook posts, expressing how hurt I was and that they took something from me I cared for deeply. What particularly hurt was being discarded on qualities I also displayed for the other group in trying to make them the website they wanted (which is frigging hard if the person giving the assignment wants you to telepatically find out what it is they want, regardles of all my prying and asking for examples so we could discuss it). Suddenly I was asked for the website login by some other guy for another, I felt that this kind of business was beneath me. I’ve been pissed of and stressed a lot about this.

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I want to let it go, but I see the texts written on facebook and on the sparse other sources and it hurts my eyes as a writer. It hurts my eyes to see the way of using the media and the ways of expressing things, because I know better and they for some reason never saw that. Obviously, I’ve been analysing my feelings thoroughly. I feel hurt in my self value and appreciation by a bunch of people who probably don’t even know me. Who don’t see how much I have given up over the last years to work for that beautiful game of hockey.

But it’s ok now, I’m expressing myself here. There’s a lot of details I feel I would like to share about the case. At some point you get frustrated by any detail of the people involved, though bigotry will always anger me to great extents. That only fuels the flames of hate. Anyways, why do I bother… This will go the way it goes, no matter what I think about it. Aparently I’ve been discarded, like my friends, but that’s something I have to accept. I’m beyond the point where I wish to know why, I just need to accept this.

Kemphanenfan Crew
Kemphanenfan Crew

I’m ok in accepting that me and others needed to suffer these blows to give some people what they want. Maybe all the tactical and careful work of the last years needed to make way for a group with no morals and scrupules and who knows it might bring the game to that other level you always hope for. I sincerely hope so, ’cause though my heart for the game has been bled dry, I love the passion I’ve seen in the players and fans. I wish them all that and more. I really hope this club will learn to treat people they way the always shouted people should be treated and never do their business like this again.

Spock said it right: “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few”.

And I’ll just take this one from Gordie and let it go.

Source: rugusavay.com

Many thanks to all the people who made hockey awesome for me.
I’d flip my finger to the others if I weren’t above that, I’ll try to cherish my good memories and the people that were worth it.

Holding on to anger is giving the people you’re angry with way more attention then they apparently ever had for you.

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