I had been skating since I learned to walk (obviously not but you get the idea). I'd been skating since the age of 5 or there abouts, going through a variety of quads, then at the age of 10, I got my first set of inlines. I went out everyday whenever I got the chance, just to skate the days away, and continued doing so for many years later.

It was the summer of '96 and skating was still my favourite pastime to escape from everything. I had been looking for a new exciting sport to keep myself occupied over the holidays and I liked the idea of a sport called street hockey.

I bought my first hockey stick from a friend that lived up the road from me, it was a black "Franklin" street hockey stick (the one's with the slip-on replaceable blades).

A couple of months later my friends Danny and Burns started to get into street hockey. Eventually more and more people in my area started to get into this addictive sport, before we knew it, we had enough players to start a street hockey team. As the months went on, more street hockey teams emerged in our home town. It was great, we now had some competition (not really though, coz they were a bit mince), but at least we had teams to play against.