Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant

Yeah I know we’re done with Christmas now – is it only me that can’t believe it’s already the middle of flipping January and it feels like months since pulling crackers and watching The Sound of Music on telly? But the ‘joyful and triumphant’ bit pretty much sums up last weekend for Lightning supporters.

It started a few days before with the news we’d signed Blaz Emersic. Even though I’ve been following Lightning for about a year, I still count myself as something of a novice, but even I knew that Blaz was a bit of a hotshot for Slough and a damn fine player – the only surprise was that he was even available in the first place. I bet I wasn’t the only one wondering how our results would go with rumours that Monir could be out of action for weeks, but in one fell swoop that changed with news of Mr Emersic’s arrival. Bit of a shocker to see such a curt, ungracious statement on the Jets’ website about it – not a single word of thanks for the man who was such a major influence for them last season. Pete Russell’s now told one of the local rags there that he “couldn’t thank (Blaz) enough” and “what he’s done has been unbelieveable especially last year”. Rearrange these words into a well known phrase: horse, door, stable, shut, bolted.

Anyway in one weekend, our newest player has already started earning his keep. I got to the Thunderdome on Saturday to the not entirely unexpected news that Monir wasn’t icing pointing to Blaz getting his maiden outing for us. Impressive to see him make that debut in a shirt with his name and number on the back and national colours on the front, so soon after signing him (lets face it how many times have we seen a new signing icing with no name and/or number on their kit (Jonas Hoog for Swindon last month, anyone?) A nice touch, so well done to those responsible J

Having only a couple of days’ preparation you could’ve understood if Blaz looked like he was still getting to know the MK boys.......but come face-off time, it looked pretty much like he’d never played anywhere else, working with Britts to set up Smults for the first of four goals.

Lightning vs Phantoms is always worth seeing; the Phantoms can be inconsistent. Whilst they can be a bit lacklustre, they’re also perfectly capable of giving their oppo a fright. Last Saturday the rubbish version turned up and from the word go, didn’t look like they could be arsed. Not to take a single thing away from our boys though – they were firing on all cylinders and played a nice calm, composed passing game. Refusing to get flustered by anything Potty could be bothered to throw at them, and calmly got on with the job of ramming their last defeat of us right back down their throats. 4-0.......job done.

Actually while I’m rambling about Potty, a mention for the right honourable horrible James Morgan. I’ve been told about his history with MK so I think I’m up to speed with why Lightning supporters hold him in such high regard....or not. And it was funny watching Nick mouthing off at Morgs on the ice while the rest of us mouthed off at him from behind the safety of the plexi...the poor love must hate coming to MK (hopefully). Although apparently he wasn’t that fond of coming here when he played for us..... Anyway I digress. My point being: how come Morgs looks SO consistently dead behind the eyes? Initially I thought he was giving an icy stare to the MKL supporters then I realised that his lights were on but nobody was home. You’d expect to see at least an occasional flicker of consciousness in two hours. Mind you, he DID fall over without any assistance from absolutely anyone last week so maybe not.

I coughed all the way through the Potty game and had a rough night, felt fairly sub-standard on Sunday morning and I admit to pondering not going to Guildford that afternoon. Nah....gotta be done. It was always going to be a match worth seeing - Lightning on a roll and Guildford arguably in a wobbly patch.

By the time we got to the Spectrum I realised why Jez Tibbetts hates the M1 and M25 so much. I’ve lived ‘daaahn saath’ for 24 years and I’m sure there’s been a 50mph limit on our bit of the M1 for most of that time, and there was more on the M25. Thankfully the Spectrum is easy to find though, unlike iceSheffield which was a bit of a magical mystery tour (thank God for Google Maps for iphone).

I’m rubbish at guesstimating attendances so I’ll leave it at saying we had a good number of supporters down there, loud and proud. We outsang the Flames supporters for the whole game and it was a superb, a really cracking atmosphere, brilliant banter and chants as always. Very funny when at 5-0 up we sang “We want six!” and the Flames lot finally woke up and sang “We want one!!” I’ve always wondered if our lads on the ice can make out what we’re singing or are they too busy concentrating on their game? (ha’way lads tell us!)

To summarise: Lightning made Guildford look VERY ordinary. I know I’m biased but if a complete novice (even more than me) wandered in, I don’t think they’d have identified the Flames as being 2^nd in the league. The boys were 2-0 up in 3 minutes and I wondered if I was hallucinating from too much Lucozade and paracetemol. Only 3 minutes into the second period and Blaz popped his MKL scoring cherry and we all went a little bit delirious.....WHAT a signing he’s turned out to be already!! Matty celebrated his goal by turning straight towards us all and cheering with us, and Grant had a fight that I don’t think many of us saw. Despite Guildford looking like they might’ve had a reviving cuppa in the first period break, the effect didn’t last and it was another straightforward win for the boys in black. A four point weekend – beating our local rivals AND one of the league frontrunners in the process – it doesn’t get much better! Thankyou Lightning, you made a lot of people very happy this weekend, and I bet we all hope you had a party on the way home J

So this weekend we face Telford in a double-header and while it’d be tempting fate to take anything for granted, fingers crossed that all will be well (I’m saying nowt else or it’ll all be my fault if it goes pear-shaped).

Let’s go Lightning!!!!!!!