I have to be on my best behaviour this week because my wife Nicole is coming over from North America.

We were only married in the summer so we’re looking forward to getting together again.

It will be a big plus for me to have a female around the place and it will make a change from looking at my stinky roommate Luke Fulghum!

Hopefully Nicole can help me produce a better performance than the one against Belfast last week.

For some reason we came out flat, the focus wasn’t there and they just walked all over us.

They have a lot of speed and move the puck well. If you come out flat-footed against a team like that you are in trouble.

 But that was our first meeting. and I’m 100 per cent sure we can match them but we have to bring our A game and the other night it was missing. The good thing is we rebounded from it.

What was funny about the Newcastle game the following night was we got in late. We ran into some traffic caused by the Great North Run and we had to go round the city about three times. and got a bit lost. We got in there and went straight on to the ice.

Bigmouth

It was funny to see the look on the guys’ faces when they saw that Whitley Bay rink.

It was like something out of the 1950’s. It was like something out of Slapshot.

But despite our lack of preparation the boys played well. We just kept going at them and wore them right down for a 7-2 victory. We wanted as many goals as possible because goal difference could count in the Challenge Cup.

It was a good journey home on the bus.

There’s a card school in the back pit which usually involves me, Tony, David Beauregard, Kyle Bruce and Kenton Smith. It gets pretty heated and the boys would probably say I’m the loudest bigmouth.

We play a game called Schnarrples and I’m usually pretty good but I’ve been faltering a bit this year.

Beau is the tricky one. He’s a snake in the grass when it comes to cards and I have to watch out for him.

On Friday we are going to support our cheerleaders. They are doing a charity walk from Old Trafford down to the rink. All donations will be gratefully accepted.

There is only one game this weekend, against Basingstoke at home on Sunday. They are bottom of the league and haven’t won a game but are definitely a team we won’t take for granted.

They are a big tough team and that will suit my game a lot better.

Hopefully I can get in some fisticuffs this week. It could happen because they have a lot of guys who could make me do that kind of stuff.

I’ve had previous with Jeremy Cornish but he wasn’t bugging me last time we played. It was Curtis Cruickshank who came up at the end of the game.

He ended up dropping the gloves then just burying his face in my chest. So I kind of just patted him on the top of his head. It wasn’t very exciting.

Cornish was yelling at me he was going to get me but I’m not really that bothered.

We’ll have to wait and see.

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