My visit back to Northern Ireland over Christmas was a great one. It always is. Well, the travel aside I suppose which was a bit of a nightmare, but the bit in between the traveling was a lot of fun; Christmas, New years, friends, family and of course a trip back to the Odyssey Arena to see the Giants. I didn’t know what to expect really having not seen them play a game in exactly two years. Did I expect the Odyssey to look bigger? Smaller? A new lick of paint? The scoreboard looked higher than before and they had new championship banners, but give or take a few subtle things, it was like I had never been away. We still parked the car in the same area, we still arrived with a few moments to spare and they still sold the watered down beer in them plastic pint cups (though in comparison to what I’ve got used to with Toronto sports teams, it’s remarkably cheap!). All in all, it was the same game-night I had last seen two years before and had enjoyed on an almost weekly basis during the hockey season for eight years prior. But what about on the ice?

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Just a decade ago the Giants were not even registering on my conscience, but within seven months of standing on Bangor seafront watching the fireworks bring in the new millennium there would be a professional hockey team in Belfast and my new found interest in this sport of ice hockey that had been slowly building over the past few years would accelerate drastically with the arrival of a team I could watch and support in person. By the end of the year I’d be sitting in their polished new, sold out, arena cheering on the new team as they won over the hearts of the Belfast people.

Ten years has went by in the blink of an eye when I think of my time following the Belfast Giants. I seen two league titles, copious amounts of great players, had away trips to Ayr and Edinburgh and the Continental Cup finals in Lugano, Switzerland. I seen a playoff championship followed by serious financial hard-times, I seen numerous playoff weekends in Nottingham both with and without the Giants team and I seen scoring standards set by players for the club that made us a team with a history. I bought various team jersey’s, went to awards dinners, contributed to bucked collections for banners, met some great fellow fans and missed just a handful of games over 8 years until I finally upped sticks and moved off to Canada. I even got so infatuated with the team that I started a website in the early years, which quickly transformed into a site dedicated to the history of the club and here I am, ten years in, sitting in Canada writing about the Belfast Giants. I’ve seen NHL games, NHL games and OHL games and while I’ve enjoyed them all I have still failed to find a team that pulls on the heart strings in the same with the Giants have, and still do.

What the Giants will look like in ten years time is anyone’s guess but when I first went to see them in December 2000 I never thought that by the end of the decade they would still be pleasing crowds and even icing a group of players born and bread in Belfast. I could wish for league titles, playoff championships and world class players in the coming decade, and that would be nice, but most of all I want to be able to fly home in ten years time to visit friends and family but also pop into the Odyssey to watch the latest Giants team doing their stuff.

Happy New Year to everyone, may your decade be a good one and may it also run hand in hand with the twists and turns of the Belfast Giants.