Over on the KotG message board I noticed a topic running that had fans debating and listing their all-time worst five Giants players. It’s thrown up some interesting names as different people have varying opinions on who didn’t impress in the teal and white. Some obvious names have come up though for every couple of obvious candidates there have been some strange choices. Someone even named Mark Dutiaume and another Matt Reid. But, anyway, to round up every Giants player with all their different positions, styles of play, attributes and rolls on the team and pick the worst five is not easy and can only really be done by deciding which players least lived up to their own individual roll within the team. The easy choice for many was the enforcer types like Angelstad and McMorrow but I haven’t included them because within the roll assigned to them, they did well enough.

McMorrow cannot be judged as bad because he didn’t score much, just as Kory Karlander cannot be judged as bad because he couldn’t fight. If we’re going to call Terran Sandwith bad because he could only score a goal against the British team in a friendly, then we have to call Ed Courtenay awful because he never blocked a shot. (Note: He may well have blocked a shot, but you get what I’m trying to say).

So McMorrow? He wasn’t a great player but he was a dam good fighter and he was a crowd pleaser. He did what he was brought in to do, he followed team instructions and delivered on them and for that reason he doesn’t make my list. Same goes with Terran Sandwith. He was unspectacular and certainly not flash; he didn’t venture over the red line very often but he was brought in to keep things tight, play defensive and shut down the oppositions top line and he did it without question, night in, night out.

Others simply don’t make the list because they had one moment of magic that made them a folk hero and as such grants them immunity from any such list. Colin Ryder is a prime example. An okay goalie at best during his Giants years, but because of his heroics during the Continental Cup qualifiers in Belfast in November 2002, he’ll never be put on a worst players list.

Finally, I won’t be putting in anyone who played less than ten games as a Giants player. It’s not enough time to properly judge a player when they have only stopped in the city for a cup of coffee before moving on to pastures new.

So here is who is on my list and if you ever read this and see your name below – no hard feelings. This doesn’t make you a bad player – you still made it as a professional in sport, something I or many many others will never do, and perhaps Belfast just didn’t work out for you. In another time and place perhaps, but while you were here, sorry, but you were no good.

Phil DeRouville (PL 25, GAA 2.58, SVP .901)
He arrived at the tail end of the 2006/07 season and played brilliantly going 8-1 with a .924 save percentage and it was enough for Ed Courtenay to re-sign him for the following year but it never worked out. Phil lasted just 13 games with his save percentage dropping to .873 with a 3.38 goals against average as the Giants started the season poorly losing 9 of 11 games. To put the blame squarely on DeRouville would be unfair – the defense was extremely poor – but after 13 games he was dropped from the team being replaced by Stevie Lyle and the Giants fortunes quickly turned.

Troy Neumeier (PL 26, G 0, A 4, PIM 20)
Troy was part of that very defensive corps in 2007/08 that played in front of Phil DeRouville that lost 9 of the first 11 games. Troy was 37 when he arrived in Belfast and long past his prime, a prime that included some high level Hockey were he was claimed to have been a very good player, but by 2007 the legs were gone, he didn’t have the pace and after 26 games was dropped from the Giants line-up just a few weeks before Christmas. It surprised me a little at the time given that the teams fortunes had begun to change and Troy had slowly started to pick up his play, but he was one of three on the block and his age likely went against him.

Ryan Smith (PL 13, G 5, A 11, PIM 12)
They say stats don’t count for everything when judging a player and if you ever wanted proof of this then look no further than Ryan Smith. Ryan had inflated points thanks to playing on a line with Ed Courtenay and Scott Cameron. He struggled from the start in Belfast. Brought it to replace Jason Ruff who retired in the off-season the pressure was on from the start but his lack of skill, scoring touch and grit in the corners never won him over to the Belfast crowd. There was sparks of good play on a handful of occasions but these were way to few and far between over the course of what has been a disastrous start to the season. He joined Phil DeRouville in being shown the exit and Troy Neumeier shortly followed. Smith returned to the lower leagues in Germany were he had originally came from.

Jason Rushton (PL 17, G 2, A 2, PIM 144)
Rushton arrived in the final third of the 2008/09 season as the teams enforcer. Reports suggested he would bring toughness to the line-up, entertainment to the fans and an edge to his game that would leave fans questioning his sanity and so we looked on with anticipation. Well, as it turned out he did indeed entertain sections of the fanbase, but unlike the likes of Angelstad and McMorrow he rarely actually won a fight and after questions of poor professionalism (he reportedly tossed his skates onto the roof of the arena in Cardiff because he didn’t fancy playing), he left the club after 13 games and was never seen again.

Jerry Keefe (PL 46, G 4, A 11, PIM 30)
Chants of ‘Jerry, Jerry, Jerry’ to the sound of that Jerry Springer cheer was my lasting memory of Jerry Keefe when he would score one of his four goals as a Giant during their formative year in 2000/01. Jerry Keefe was the Giants first ever American born player on the roster and his greatest moment as a Belfast Giants game when the President of the U.S.A. Bill Clinton came for a visit and Jerry got to meet his commander and chief. Keefe was the extra forward on that original Giants team and never really done that much so when Dave Whistle signed on for another year as coach at the end of that first season Keefe was never likely to return and he didn’t. Still, thanks to being on the first ever Giants team and being the only American he, unlike many other poor players after him, will always be remembered – by those of us were there when it all began.

Worst 5 Brits

I suppose while we’re at it! … I didn’t want to include them in the main list given that baring the rule of having to carry a certain number of Brits most of them wouldn’t have made the team at all as seen by the lack of Brits on the Giants team in the ISL days, but in a category of their own there were a few that stood out from the others. One thing I can say about the British players is that few failed to ever gave anything but 100% effort every game. The same 10 game minimum rule applied and so the short list got pretty small pretty quickly when you obviously excluded the likes of Tony Hand and Colin Shields from it. One missing name that has played a number of games now but never put up so much as a point is Robbie Brown but given that he is effectively in the Giants team to gather experience rather than to seriously contribute, I haven’t put him on the list above. A few of them names you’ll be forgiven for having forgot, but they did play and they didn’t overly impress. In alphabetical order:

Lewis Christie
Gareth Martin
Bari McKenzie
Paul Moran
Grant Taylor

On the subject: Jason Rushton, Jerry Keefe, Phil DeRouville, Ryan Smith, Top 5, Troy Neumeier | ALL SUBJECTS |

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