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Phoenix fans meet the players

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J Davidson sponsored Manchester Phoenix held their annual “Meet the Players Evening” at the Mercure Hotel in downtown Manchester on Friday evening.

The evening had a different feel to it this year as the club introduced their ENL Trafford Metros team and the Manchester Phoenix Sledge Hockey side.

Prior to the event, the club’s Press Officer Jim Piper facilitated a session in which  representatives of local newspapers  and radio stations asked questions and interviewed the players.

Phoenix TV presenter Pete Hagan compèred the evening and started things off by introducing Managing Director Neil Morris to the fans.

Neil talked about a difficult summer with the loss of some sponsors but did mention that the club were working hard to bring in new blood. He also said that the Manchester Foundation was going from strength to strength and was “taking the hockey word” to the local community. Neil was also pleased with Coach Tony Hand’s recruitment for the new season and was confident the club would challenge on all fronts for silverware this season.

Neil concluded his early part in the proceedings by announcing the return of headline sponsors J Davidson for another year and presented the Davidson family with this season’s shirt.

Pete then brought several members of the Manchester Phoenix Sledge Hockey team on to the stage to introduce them to the crowd and spoke briefly to a couple of the players. 3 time paralympian Karl Nicholson spoke a little about sledge hockey and his career in the sport and enthused about the progress the fledgling team was making, even hinting that they might just challenge the top teams for honours next season.

Then it was the turn of the Trafford Metros who came out to generous applause. Many fans had not seen the Metros before last season but, thanks to a great season ticket holders’ initiative, numbers increased last year and many Phoenix fans were pleasantly surprised at the standard of hockey on show.

Pete spoke to Shannon Long, brother of Phoenix forward Ciaran, if there was any sibling rivalry between them. Shannon replied that there was not as ‘he (Ciaran) was adopted.’ This brought a ripple of laughter from the fans.

On to the main event of the evening and Pete brought on the players one by one to suffer his usual grilling on stage. Some of the answers to Pete’s questions had the fans laughing as Pete tried to glean some extra information from the players. When Ondrej Pozivil was asked his reasons for coming to Phoenix, he replied: “To see a new country, experience a new hockey style, and new girls.”

The last player to be introduced was billed as a veteran signing and Tony Hand MBE gave everybody the answer to the 64,000 question. “Are you going to play this season?”

Tony gave the fans the answer they were all hoping he was going to give.

He replied:”Yes I will be playing, but I will be combining playing with coaching from the bench. We have a lot of younger players and they need my support as a coach. So I will be playing but probably not as much as in previous seasons. Last year was frustrating with my injury but the upside was that I was able to take a good look from the bench. I missed playing but the team did pretty well without me, going on that long winning streak.”

After all the introductions were made, the evening was handed over to the fans to get autographs and mingle and chat with the players. A good time was had by all as the team and fans turn their attention to Sunday’s game and the important job of keeping the Rose Bowl at home where it belongs.