Thought the blackout thing was an interesting promotion but kind of funny to see. Unlike the sea of white/yellow/red thing that other teams do, black, by it's very nature, doesn't stand out - but it makes any colour you put next to it stand out. So when a look at a crowd wearing a lot of black, what you really notice is how many people are not wearing black. And faces and arms. And empty yellow seats. And the yellow paint in the aisles. But it was the slimmest-looking crowd at IWS in decades, so who's complaining.
Loved the partially demolished school beside the stadium - looked cool from high up, like our very own version of the Colosseum. Kind of an over-the-top tongue-in-cheek FU to those people that only think of Hamilton as a city in decay.
Somebody keep that Stripes dude on a leash. Yeah, everyone was excited, but he was mingling and clowning around with the players on the sidelines for most of the fourth quarter. Maybe I'm old school but mascots are there to entertain the fans not the players.
An empty mickey in the urinal before half-time - very '70s Ticats. Forbidden chant cultural curators take note.
Speaking of booze-soaked vintage Ticat culture, there was a guy in an original Howard Fields(!) jersey that was sitting in my seat before the game. Absolutely blotto but harmless - at about 7:15PM he asked the person that sits next to me what the score was. He moved down a few rows and was escorted from the stadium by Hamilton's finest before Lumsdem scored his first TD. Left me three of those foam hammers, though.
They kept apologizing for the fact that they only had Canadian left at the beer stand. Don't apologize, ladies - it's the only beer with any taste that you sell.
I'm not one to complain about the sound system, but the sound system was atrocious during parts of the game. Like one of those cars with window-rattling bass-only sound systems but worse. Maybe it's the way a sea of black cotton absorbs the higher frequencies or something.
Best of all, I had a little ticketing problem that I needed to sort out, but arrived late and figured I was going to miss a good part of the game. Big kudos to the people at the box office - they really went above and beyond what I expected. A small thing, but it meant a lot to me - apart from four years of mostly boneheaded decisions on the football management side (), I really like the way this organization treats its fans. Maybe I'll down to Ticat World HQ this afternoon and see if I can get my hands on a vintage Fields jersey.