Belfast Giants were in the news recently.
No, it wasn't when they became Elite champions earlier this year, again, the seventh time they won the banner since they were formed in 2000.
They signed a former Premier League footballer on a temporary contract and hit the headlines.
It’s indicative of where ice hockey lives in the Irish sporting consciousness, which can be considered somewhat curious given the nation's penchant for laying claim to any international achievement, no matter how strong or weak the link.
When kicker Dan Whelan became the first Irish-born player to feature in the NFL since 1985 it made the news.
When there’s Irish success in the AFL or AFLW in Australia, it gets a good airing.
They are one of the few fully professional outfits based on the island and not only compete in the UK’s Elite Ice Hockey League, they are its most successful team, winning the championship six times since 2003 when the competition was set up.
A quick Google search of three mainstream sports media outlets, including RTÉ, in Ireland returns very few results on the team.
The most prominent was the news that 41-year-old former football goalkeeper Petr Cech joined as a back-up netminder last month.
They operate with three 'goalkeepers’ but were without Canadian Jackson Whistle and Antrim man Andrew Dickson so the four-time Premier League winner with Chelsea, who was based in London and playing with Oxford City Stars, came on board as temporary cover. He featured just once but it was a worthwhile story.
Here he comes! | #EIHL
— Elite Ice Hockey League | #EIHL (@officialEIHL) November 25, 2023
Petr Čech makes professional hockey debut with the @BelfastGiants. 💪 pic.twitter.com/u0kaSRRTjO
"Last April we had a charity game against a touring Ukraine team and he came over and played in that for us," Dickson tells RTÉ Sport.
"Later we were in Guildford and Jackson and I were injured. He was at the game and Adam [Keefe, Giants head coach] and him had a chat and he was more than happy to come over and help us out in a bit of a jam.
"It was great for him, it would have been the highest level he was involved with properly.
"He was definitely capable. It’s not just like, ‘there’s Petr Cech, let’s get him on for the fun of it’.
"He's a nice fellow, very humble. I think he liked it here because most of our guys are Canadian or American, they don’t have a clue who he is, so he just gets treated like everyone else."
Talking to fans, a journalist, and even a player, it seems like people just stumble across ice hockey in Ireland.
But when they fall for it, like a novice ice skater, they fall hard.
Dickson (below) is the only Irish native on the Giants pro roster at the moment and explains how he got into the game, more by accident than design.
"[I’d never played] field hockey or anything like that, just football and a little bit of rugby," says the 36-year-old.
"I was quite late to hockey. Whenever I left high school there was a cross-community programme here and it was a protestant guy and a catholic guy who went to Philadelphia and stayed together.
"It was my best mate who went out and Philadelphia has quite the ice hockey following and he got really into it.
"When he came back, I was like ‘it’s pretty cool’ and we started playing video games and we bought in-line hockey gear, roller blades and stuff online, sort of mucking about.
"We started a team in Ballymoney, which is about an hour away from the ice rink in Dundonald.
"We were messing around playing that and eventually, the team that is now the Junior Giants, asked me if I would come play with their U17 team and it went well. I won quite a few goalie awards early on.
"Probably because the team wasn’t that great and you get lots of shots at you and plenty of opportunities to shine.
"Basically, I got into it by accident."
The Giants organisation was set up by two Canadian businessmen in 1997, Rob Zeller and Albert Maasland, and found its home in the Odyssey complex, joining the British Ice Hockey Superleague three years later.
Dickson, who joined back in 2009, has witnessed big changes over the years.
"The organisation has changed a lot. I probably got signed because I was a cheap option; at the time you didn’t want to spend money on your number two goalie.
"We were lucky that we won championships early.
"If you look back at the pictures we had 20-odd guys, now there's 40-odd, staff, masseuses, assistant coaches. The whole thing has become a lot more professional, not just in Belfast, but league-wide.
"It’s hard to get a ticket to some games. When I first started there was never any issue.
"The fans have grown in numbers and we've been pretty successful over the last few years, that helps.
"The production also helps, they really make it a family night, they have pre-game pyrotechnics and make it a spectacle.
"We’re here nearly 25 years and we are building [a tradition]. We do have a loyal fan base who travel to most games. It’s pretty expensive to follow us."
The cost doesn’t stop the faithful, however.
Father and daughter, Neil and Emer Bradon, from Maynooth, Co Kildare, are regulars and travel around the UK and Europe to support their team.
"This is our third year as season-tickets holders," says Neil, originally from Nottingham. "We leave at 4pm, there for 6pm, game starts at 7 and we’re back home for midnight
"We did 50 games last season, home and away, we even went to Switzerland."
Emer adds: "If it comes up and people are like what sport are you into, I say ice hockey and they’re like, do they even have ice hockey in Ireland, is it a thing? I’m like, yeah, it actually is."
Andrea Owens runs the Giants supporters club, and like many others, she came across the sport after getting some free tickets and instantly fell in love.
"I had been given some tickets from the sponsor around 2005 and it just snowballed from there," she says.
"I’d never heard of ice hockey before. From the 2008/09 season I’ve missed very few games.
"I suppose the unique part where you can fight in the middle of the game. For some people it is a selling point. You’ve got the really skilful side with men on skates, who are flying around controlling this tiny puck.
"At the same time you’ve got these big guys who are having mini boxing matches on the ice."
These days the Giants are owned by the Odyssey Trust and draw and average of 5,700 to their home games.
Last season 196,558 fans came to the SSE Arena.
The organisation, which came into existence just a few years after the Troubles ended, prides itself on its neutrality, says sports reporter Adam McKendry, who covers the Giants for the Belfast Telegraph.
"The fans would be from across the divide, if you want to call it that," he says.
"You would get fans from East Belfast, West Belfast, the Giants put a real prominence on their neutrality, which is why the colour is teal.
"There’s no green, no blue, no red, they are straight down the middle in terms of political leanings.
"You are not allowed to have football jerseys in the arena as part of that. It is very much a wide array of fans."
Dickson, Owens and McKendry all point to one main factor when asked why the sport has not caught on here, relative to its global popularity.
There’s only a single ice hockey rink on the island. If you don’t build it, they can’t come.
"The lack of ice hockey facilities doesn’t help," says McKendry.
"There is one rink on the island, in Dundonald in Belfast.
"So if you are an ice hockey fan, you can’t really play unless you are willing to travel to Dundonald.
"[Another] issue is a lack of visibility. There’s not TV deal so in order for you to watch a Belfast Giants game you have to be there in person or buy the webstream, which is £15.
"And if you are watching ice hockey on a stream, then you can get NHL, or Swedish League games for free, which is a better quality than the Elite League."
The Irish Ice Hockey Association runs the Nigel Smeaton Memorial Cup and includes teams from Dublin, Kilkenny, Belfast and Cork, all of whom have to play the games in Dundonald.
The national team, made up of "85-90% Irish-bred" players according to the IIHA's media officer Derek O’Neill, competes in the Development Cup, which is run by the International Ice Hockey Federation.
The men’s side took bronze in at the 2022 tournament, which was won by Colombia
The Ireland women’s team reached the semi-final last November.
Dickson lines out for Ireland and says it’s hard to grow the game substantially without proper facilities but things are looking up.
"If Ireland wanted to really go for it they could get a team with Americans and Canadians with Irish passports and they would be very strong," says Dickson.
"But this one here tends to be guys from Ireland or they have some association with playing here.
"A lot of the guys play in-line [hockey].
"If you are from Kilkenny are you really travelling up to Dundonald twice a week to play on the ice at 10 at night?
"The standard at Development Cup surprised me. The first year we went we got a bronze and now you have guys from Belfast are starting to come around to it.
"You need to have something to play for because if you are just playing for fun you’ll never take it that seriously."
Meanwhile, the Giants lost last night against Glasgow Clan. They go again against Dundee Stars on Saturday night. Everyone is welcome.
