Eagle Lover
It’s a dreich day in March 1999. The ritual riot that passes for playground football is in full flow when a classmate points toward something behind me.
“Hey Franky, isn’t that your Dad?”
I turn around. Yes, it is.
This is very odd.
What is he doing here? Is something wrong? Have I done something wrong?
“Guess what!?” he exclaims.
I shrug my shoulders, still confused as to why my Dad has turned up at my primary school during lunch time.
“You’re gonna be the mascot for the Eagles tonight!”
Formed in 1996 by the late Bill Barr of Barr Construction, the Ayr Scottish Eagles quickly became one of Britain’s best ice hockey teams. Led by Canadian head coach Jim Lynch and his Czech assistant Milan Figala (who sadly died from cancer in 2000, aged only forty-four), the duo led the team to a clean sweep of all four competitions in only their second season, a then unprecedented “Grand Slam.”
While the following season saw them fail to retain any of their domestic titles, the Eagles had stunned the hockey world by beating Russian champions AK Bars Kazan home and away in the European Hockey League, a campaign that ended in heartbreak at the home of fellow eagles Die Adler Mannheim of Germany’s DEL.
The disappointment of the European exit and losing their Benson & Hedges Cup, Challenge Cup and Superleague titles could be salvaged if they could retain the playoff title. It was around this time that I was to be a mascot, in a late season match against the Newcastle Riverkings at the Centrum, home of the Eagles.
I say around because due to the eccentricities of ice hockey scheduling, the Eagles’ final league match and first playoff match would both be against the Riverkings; the league match on Wednesday 3 March 1999, the play-off match the following Thursday 11 March. Therefore, I’m not certain which game I was mascot for, just that I know it was one of the two as they both took place on school nights. The match was also aired live on Sky television and I still have the match programme from the playoff fixture which leads me to suspect that it is the latter.
After the unexpected visit from my Dad, I spent the rest of the school day in a state of giddy excitement, not quite believing my luck. Years later, he told me that some unlucky kid had pulled out of being that night’s mascot due to sickness though I doubt my 10-year-old self would have felt much sympathy had I’d known then.
This was my night.
My Dad and I had quickly fallen in love with the sport, travelling the length and breadth of Britain to follow the Eagles and becoming season ticket holders from the second season until the team’s sad demise in 2002.
I had become a walking billboard for the Eagles (and their sponsors Barr Construction which always featured prominently on their jerseys due to Barr’s ownership of the team), which led to my being baptised with the unfortunate sobriquet of “Eagle Lover” by a friend’s older brother when walking down Ayr High Street one day in the teams’ colours. Ironically, my tormentor later became a “Blackhawk Lover” when he moved to Chicago.
I had been tentatively learning how to ice-skate though I never did figure out how to keep my ankles straight and how to stop once I picked up some speed. However, I would be more than able to perform my “duty” as mascot.
Once the school bell rung, I ran home, eager to put together my uniform for the night. Helmet, gloves, jersey, skates, and stick.
Except, I didn’t have a stick! At least, not one that wasn’t broken.
I did have a roller hockey stick that had a plastic blade affixed to the bottom; a blade so obviously illegal that tough Eagles defenceman Ryan Kummu would have been proud. But that wouldn’t be suitable for ice. This could be a problem — I didn’t want to be a mascot without a stick, how lame would that be?
I needn’t have worried. Once we arrived at the Centrum (now the Prestwick branch of Sainsbury’s), I was presented with a stick I could use. And not just any old stick; Jiri Lala’s stick.
The experienced Czech Lala had become the teams’ talisman during the Eagles’ first season; in much the same way a certain Swedish footballer who arrived in Scotland just as Lala left to return to Germany, would become. Lala’s goal-scoring exploits had thrilled the Centrum crowd so to take the ice with one of his sticks was quite the honour. It, along with Grand Slam winning goaltender Rob Dopson’s stick, remain the jewels of my Eagles memorabilia collection.
I was taken to the dressing room, where I met none other than Dennis Purdie, a prolific goal scorer and hero of the Grand Slam team, who had been plagued by injury since an ugly hit by Sheffield Steeler Corey Beulieau in a match the previous season. He would not be playing tonight and was reclined on a table, receiving treatment from a physio.
“Hey kid” came a laconic Canadian drawl.
“You never want to get a ligament injury. They’re the worst.”
Being horrendously shy, I just stared back in amazement and embarrassment. What was I going to say to Dennis Purdie?
As face off approached, I was asked who I’d like to skate out with.
There was no doubt.
A Canadian of Italian heritage, it wasn’t surprising that I had come to idolize him, given his goal-scoring exploits and my own Italian roots. I’d even seen him occasionally at Saint Margaret’s church where I was an altar boy; a diminutive, bespectacled man which was at odds with the feisty scrapper he became when he took to the ice.
“Do you play?” he asked me.
I sheepishly shook my head.
In the tunnel before the game, I recognized Karry Biette, yet another Canadian, who was flicking a roll of tape off the top of the dressing room door with his stick.
Being 10, I didn’t realise that this was a pre-match ritual of Biette’s and tried to steal the roll of tape from him using my stick.
Ice hockey players are notoriously superstitious, and I had just interrupted Biette’s routine. He glared with me with a look that seemed to say, “what the hell do you think you’re doing kid!?”
I’m sure some of his teammates were amused though we didn’t have time to dwell on it as the excited voice of Kevin McCoskrie -who still to this day performs the same duties for the Glasgow Clan at their Braehead Arena home — boomed over the public address system to announce the arrival of the home side.
It was time to take to the ice!
I had chosen to wear the previous seasons’ away shirt, a lovely green and orange jersey that also had my surname printed on the back — BONFANTI 99 -the same number as “The Great One,” Wayne Gretzky. However, it also meant I’d stick out like a sore thumb on the ice as the Eagles would be wearing their predominantly white home jersey. If I slipped and fell, I’d have no hiding place. I would just die from embarrassment.
Upon taking to the ice, I initially lagged behind Mark — a man who like many Canadians may well have been born on ice — but he turned around and waited for me to catch up, and took me around the ice a few times while the team line-ups were announced. I didn’t fall.
“And tonight’s mascot is Francesco Bonfanti, who’s 10 and from Ayr! He skates out with his favourite player Mark Montanari! Let’s give him a big cheer!” McCoskrie’s voice boomed.
Surreal doesn’t quite describe the feeling. What a rush!
Eventually, the teams lined up on their blue lines for the national anthem. I felt 10 feet tall.
All too soon it was time for the first puck to drop so Mark escorted me off the ice though not before he posed for a photo with me. My Dad later got the photo enlarged with Mark’s autograph.
I returned to my seat to the congratulations of my Dad and our fellow supporters, cheering our team to a 6–3 victory. I must have inspired them!
We would spend many more hours with them over the next three years, even that night when I was hit by a stray Bracknell Bee’s slapshot — I really got the complete ice hockey experience.
Unfortunately, the Eagles folded after an ill-fated move to Glasgow in 2002 but I’ll never forget the night I briefly became an ice hockey player. And not just any old ice hockey player.
An Ayr Eagle.
