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| December 1984: The Peterborough Ravens and Solihull Vixens on the front cover of Ice Hockey World magazine. |
Paul Breeze: I have always been interested in women’s ice hockey, right back to when I first started watching the game in Peterborough in the early 1980s. They had a women’s team back then, called the Peterborough Ravens, and they actually won the English League Title twice in a row.
One of the women’s team players was in my year at school and another, while being older than me, lived a little further up our road and our Mothers knew each other. I recognised a lot of the other Raven’s players from the Friday and Saturday evening “Laser Blade Disco” sessions at the rink, but obviously back then they were probably much too grown up and important to notice this spotty teenager.
Fast forward some 30 years and Lucy and I found ourselves following the Wild Team in Widnes. We were overjoyed to discover that there was to be a new women’s team and we made sure that we were present to watch the first ever home game – a 1 – 2 home defeat against Milton Keynes Falcons. Having always “done Something” at ice hockey matches – before I started helping out with the announcing at Blackpool Seagulls games, I used to write match reports for the Fylde Flyers and before that always used to write down the goals and penalties in the Match Programmes – I found it practically impossible to watch the game and not do anything. So I started writing match reports of the women’s games and posting them on my own Ice Hockey Review websit. These were noticed and, thankfully, appreciated and ended up being sent to the local newspapers.
Because the Team appreciated the efforts that Lucy and I had been going to to cover the game and encourage more people to come and watch, they very kindly invited Lucy to present the MVP Awards at the last match of their debut season.
We carried on following the Wild Women’s Team and giving them encouragement and coverage as often as we could and at the game towards the end of the 2017/2018 season, I decided to take advantage of the fact that the Wild Women were playing against the Hull Team to present a copy of my season’s review book to Hull player Lois Tomlinson who had contributed some of the photographs to the book. I let it be known at the start of the game that this is what I wanted to do and Mandy Sinclair kindly asked me to present the MVP Awards as well.
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| PB holding the "offensive confectionery"! (Photo by Geoff White) |
I said that I would do my best and looked forward to the post match presentations with some trepidation. For anybody who hasn’t experienced this, going on to the ice after the game has finished is a slightly eerie sensation. From the side of the plexiglass that I am used to being on, you don’t normally hear a lot of what goes on on the ice. But when you are on the other side of the plexiglass, you can hear all sorts of things.
I found myself standing outside the Hull penalty box waiting to present the MVP Awards, which happened to be a very small box of chocolates. This had just been thrust into my hand on the way out onto the ice and I had no previous involvement with the award and while I was standing waiting for the announcements of the recipients, I could hear grumbles of disapproval that I was going to hand them a small box of chocolates rather than a nice shiny trophy for them to keep.
Mindful of Geoff’s request, regarding the photos, I then proceeded to make myself even less popular by insisting that they take their helmets off to pose for the presentation shots (mutter, mutter "hair...!" etc.... ). I thought that everything went really well and was very pleased with how all the photos came out but it was not until I was looking back at various photos during the summer months that I did appreciate why the girls might have been a little miffed when at most games the MVPs receive a nice statuette to keep and men’s ice hockey teams’ MVPs always get given a large crate of beer.
This wrankled with me over the summer months and as Lucy had previously announced that she would like to sponsor some sort of award for the Widnes Wild Women’s Team, I suggested that we should possibly sponsor the MVP awards for the home games for the following season. Lucy thought this was a great idea, the Team were very pleased as it gave them one thing less to worry about having to organise and the rest, as they say, is history.
We sponsored the 2018/2019 MVP awards in honour of Sarah Macnaughtan, a British writer famous at the time of WW1 who went to help in Belgium, France and Russia and who died of exhaustion in 1916. Everyone concerned was very pleased with how the presentations went and it was agreed that we would sponsor the 2019/2020 season awards, with Lucy opting to honour the memory of Edith Smith, who became Britain’s first Warranted Woman Police Officer during the First World War. Edith has a special connection to the area as she was born in Oxton on the Wirral Peninsula on the other side of the River Mersey, and she died in Halton, Runcorn, which is not far from Widnes Planet Ice Rink.
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| Lucy presenting the first Sarah Macnaughtan Award in December 2018 (Photo by Paul Breeze) |
I soon became an ice hockey fan and enjoyed going to the old Altrincham rink to follow the Aces team and later to the rink in Clevelys for Fylde Flyers and Blackpool Seagulls games. When the Fylde Flyers Team moved to the new Planet Ice rink in Widnes and formed the nucleus of the Widnes Wild Team, we went to see them play and ended up helping out.
I began researching the First World War at the request of Dean Johnson, the Merseyside singer/songwriter who started the Wilfred Owen Museum. Paul and I met Dean after a performance of his musical tribute to Wilfred Owen – “Bullets and Daffodils”. I offered to help and Dean asked me to come up with an exhibition of Female Poets of WW1 for display in November 2012. By the time the exhibition was on display I had become so fascinated by the subject that I just continued researching.
Although my Grandfather was an ‘Old Contemptible’ – he joined the Army as a Boy Soldier when he was 16 and his Regiment of Artillery was sent to France in August 1914 – I never realised the extent to which women were involved in WW1 until I began my research in 2012.
