Cornish Nasty

Cornish in a familier pose - Photo by Tony Boot

Pardon me for the lack of my usual exuberance but I really can’t work up any excitement over Basingstoke’s signing of Jeremy Cornish. I’m sure he’s a nice enough bloke and everything and no one can fault him for making a little hockey talent go a long way. I just feel that this is another sign that whilst the Elite League isn’t going to the dogs just yet it is heading down a road that will only have a detrimental effect. 

Teams in the lower half of the league seem to be stocking up on players that are likely to have their own seat in the penalty box. How is that going to be good for this league? In the short term it might put a few bums on seats (although that never really happened at the Racers) but what’s it going to do to the league’s reputation? Are we going to end being seen as the LNAH of Europe? We’ve already seen some of the most talented and skilled players in the league move to Denmark over the summer. How are we going to replace them when all prospective targets will hear is half the teams in the league are filled with goons? 

The thing is though I don’t really blame the likes of Hull or Basingstoke for doing this. The Elite league’s ruling that they can employ an additional import has, to some considerable degree, influenced teams in the lower half of the table decisions for one simple reason – they can use this disparity when playing the likes of Nottingham, Sheffield, Coventry and Belfast to their advantage. 

The easiest way to explain how this will work for them is to use an example so bear with me. Panthers are playing Bison at a date that may be released sometime in the week before it happens the way things are going! Jeremy Cornish decides that he’s had enough of trying to skate backwards and tries to pick a fight with Bruce Richardson. Bruce obliges and the two square off much to the delight of most of those watching. Now, if two players fight in our league the chances are (you can’t be certain with our referees) that they’ll both get five minute penalties each and up until this season this hasn’t really been much of a problem. OK, one team might lose a player that is better than the other but they’ll still have the same number of imports (providing it was import versus import in the fight on the ice). That won’t be the case now. Basingstoke will now have an additional import so it pays them to employ a knuckle dragger like Cornish as their additional import. His only role will need to be goading opposition players into a fight to help create a numerical import advantage. 

I simply don’t see how this is going to help the league in the eyes of outsiders. We’ve already taken a step backwards from the ISL are we going further by doing this? I guess time will tell.

Written by Paul Balm