We went to an ice hockey match at the weekend. Our friends' girls were on the 'cheer team' who were performing during the game, and we bought the tickets through the school, who advertised the evening under the above title. We were excited to be part of the atmosphere, and duly filled our boots with popcorn, hotdogs, nachos and ice cream (and a little bit of wine for me!)
So, we were somewhat surprised when things turned violent!! I didn't quite catch the rules of the game, apart from the fact there seemed to be about 40 players on each team! (most of them sitting out on the bench in reserve) Any time they got disgruntled they beat the **** out of their opponents!!! They took each others helmets off and repeatedly punched them in the face while the 3 referees looked on. As far as I could work out, this was fairly normal and expected- the crowd roared and cheered and shouted 'fight fight fight!!!!!!' The refs only got involved if there were more than 5 punches in a row from one player- and that poor soul got 2 minutes of penalty on the bench (but there were another 39 on the team so it didn't seem too detrimental!!)See player no. 5 to see what I mean.
Fortunately, Emily was still ill, so we had to leave early, but it certainly was not a game I would call 'family friendly'!!
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