Paisley Pirates have altered their starting times for home games at Braehead Arena for the coming Scottish National League season.
Secretary Jackie Turley explained,”We very much see ourselves as a club serving the local community, and families in particular, and in recent seasons a few people have said to us that the 6.00pm face off meant that families, with the prospect of school for the kids the next day, found it a little tight, if not impossible, to get children to bed at a reasonable hour after coming to watch their favourite ice hockey team.”
“With that in mind, our landlords at Braehead Arena were very accommodating in allowing us to bring the starting time on a Sunday forward to 5.00pm, meaning that matches shouldn’t finish much beyond 7.00pm, thus allowing parents to get their kids home and safely tucked up in bed in time to get a good night’s sleep before school on Monday morning. We think this will also help the many groups who come to watch the Pirates, in that parents will be able to pick up their kids an hour earlier and get them home in good time.”
“We always want to respond positively to supporters’ concerns, and given our desire to be a real community club we’re delighted when we can act on such suggestions put forward to us. In bringing the start time forward, and on Saturdays we’ll begin at 6.30pm, we’re hoping, too, that we can maybe encourage along a few more away supporters, as they in turn will be getting home that bit earlier. When you’ve got a two hour trip to somewhere like Dundee, getting home at 9.30pm instead of 10.30pm might just be enough to tempt you through, and that in turn might help improve the atmosphere on match nights-there’s nothing quite like having a few visiting supporters in the rink, as our own fans illustrate every time we play away, to ramp up the volume a few notches!”