Tina takes a rare in-season foray into article writing in response to the recent FT article that has caused much discussion and widespread condemnation from the British hockey community.
I’m not often motivated into writing articles, I usually do my yearly attendance analysis and that’s me about done, I leave the rest of the wordsmithing to Paul and Adam, they’re much better at it than me. However, an article has surfaced that is probably more appropriately addressed by someone directly affected by it.
If this has so far passed you by, I’ll catch you up, although you won’t find me giving the article in question any further publicity, so if you want to read it in its entirety then you’ll have to go and find it yourself. Believe me, it won’t take you long, the rage, incredulity and the more than a little derision it’s created on social media has earned it more links and reposts than it really deserves.
The article quickly descends into a tone which, let’s not beat around the bush here, sets the attitude towards female hockey fans back at least 20 years. We’ve been left wide open to the misogynists who will read that article and feel like they are fully justified in labelling us all ‘puck bunnies’ or ‘crazy stalkers’, as if we haven’t had long enough fighting the stereotypes already.
The title of the article is looking to pin the surge in attendance in Elite League hockey in recent years on women reading hockey romance novels but offers little to back this up and in part, serves to offer several Panthers fans up to ridicule who have since taken to social media to state that they have either been mis-quoted or mis-led as to the purpose of the article. There are some things that were shared with the author of the article I would personally have advised against, probably said in casual conversation that was never meant to be quoted for an article, but there seems to have been a deliberate inclusion of statements that portray female hockey fans essentially as vacuous.
The Cats Whiskers team has been fortunate to have a good relationship with a couple of previous sports writers for the Nottingham Evening Post, and indeed, inducted one into our ‘Hall of Fame’ recently, journalists have a job to do, need to sell their words and some of them are going to use the parts that suit their narrative. This is sadly going to serve as a cautionary tale for those ladies who have contributed in good faith.
Despite the title of the article and the turn it takes, the author starts by saying she’s in Manchester to report on the growing popularity of ice hockey in the UK but mentions nothing on the specifics of the attendance of women at this point and I have to wonder what caused that directional shift. Was this a deliberate omission or did the romance literature angle come later? Parts of the article appear to be written as though the author is trying to almost mimic the style of the hockey romance novels, describing warm ups as being a performance where players ‘gyrate’ and ‘make strange thrusting motions with their hips’, as someone who plays sports, I grant you not professionally, I can confidently say that warm ups are a necessary step to guard against injury.
Thankfully there is actually some balance in the form of the Panthers fan who inhabits the alter-ego of Paws, he comments that he hasn’t seen any difference over the years with how fans interact with players and highlights the double standard that he as a grown man can ask a player for an autograph and not be accused of being a puck bunny. It’s appreciated and given the tone of the rest of the article, I’m surprised it made the final cut.
The article mentions within it that the Elite League have reported that in 2025 women made up 45% of attendees league wide and 60% of new season ticket holders at Coventry Blaze are female but offers no figures or commentary to confirm if this is up or down on previous seasons so adds little value to the subject of the article. If you’re going to add something like this to support your subject matter it needs context, as someone who’s been doing a running article on attendance for several years, I know that simply posting one season’s figures tells you nothing about what the data actually means and even gives rise to the suggestion that the data doesn’t actually support your hypothesis. Either way, it’s shoddy work.
Similarly, the author talks about speaking to a publisher who said that the genre of hockey romance is a growing market, but it’s a long stretch to conclusively say that the sales of these books are directly leading to a ‘surge’ in attendance to games by women. The author has spoken to one woman who has read an impressive amount of hockey romance books and finally, we have a coherent statement that actually links to the point of the article, but it’s just one person and cannot be the basis of solid research. I’m not much of a reader, nor do I favour romance novels so that was never going to be my route into the sport but that’s not to say I would ever berate anyone if they took this route to the ‘hockey family’, however you found yourself here, I hope you feel welcome.
One of my podcast cohorts once light-heartedly called me a puck bunny and it was met with a string of light-hearted profanity, I knew it was meant in good humour and I took it as such but it is something that us female hockey fans appear to have to deal with on a regular basis. Am I going to sit here and try to tell you that I’ve never found a hockey player attractive? No, I am a heterosexual female with fully functioning eyes. Am I also going to tell you that I’ve never bought anything to give to a player? Also, no. I once bought Evan Mosey a beer for no-choicing Cale Tanaka (for context for the newer fan, an agitating little rat who would hide behind a bigger player when confronted). But there’s no way I’d be paying 700-odd quid for a season ticket just to (inappropriately now given my age) perv on a few blokes in skates. I love the game, I’m a stats nerd, and I do a podcast, I’d have been chased off said podcast years ago, or never invited on it in the first place, if I didn’t know anything about the game.
The article is disappointing because it paints a negative picture of some of the women involved in it which will very quickly become a sweeping generalisation, the lack of research undertaken to support the point the author is trying to make is astounding and it belittles the efforts that the ten EIHL teams have made to get the attendances to where they are.
Disingenuous, damaging and pure fiction.
If you would like to submit an article for consideration, please email it to tcwonlinetv@gmail.com
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