SHEFFIELD,U.K-It’s a Friday July 25 evening and I’ve caught Dave Simms in a talkative mood.
“There are three types of people in this world” he tells me, before launching into an impassioned speech against his least favourite people in ice hockey. “There are people who don’t care, there are talkers and there are doers. I’m a doer. The vast majority of people on these hockey forums are talkers.”
Nick Rothwell and Dave Simms (Photo by Mark Tredgold)
On occasions his banter, both during games and through the press have provoked strong feeling amongst opposing clubs and their fans. This has been particularly evident with the Steelers’ arch-rivals, the Nottingham Panthers who have enjoyed a love-hate relationship with Simms ever since he ‘poached’ former Panthers’ coach Mike Blaisdell for the Steelers back in 1999.
Yet for all his words, Simms is undoubtedly a ‘doer’ as well as a talker. Earlier this month, he was at the Forest of Arden Hotel help running the UK’s first ever coaching clinic alongside Team GB and Coventry Blaze head coach Paul Thompson. I began by asking him how he had got involved with that.
“About four or five years ago I went with Paul to the Roger Neilson clinic in Windsor, Ontario, mainly just to network a bit and also because I was the team manager in Sheffield at that time and I was interested in how coaches operated,” Simms said.
“While we were there we saw Kevin Constantine present and all we did on the way home was talk about him. Then we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to get a clinic going over here for all the young British coaches, it also be great if Kevin Constantine was our first speaker,” Simms said. “And, do you know who our first speaker was? Kevin Constantine!.” Simms explained the process for setting up the coaching clinic. “We started planning it about twelve months ago and we had no idea whether three or 103 people would turn up, Paul and I realised it was going to cost us a fair few pounds but we thought it was worth it,” Simms said. “As it happens we know Gunnar Svennson who is a player agent in Sweden for the likes of Henrik Zetterberg and he put us in touch with Scotty Bowman and Kevin Constantine who jumped at the opportunity of getting involved.”
The event itself was better than expected and both Simms and Thompson were pleasently surprised. “The event itself was outstanding, It was a super venue and we had 82 coaches,” Simms said. “The feedback we got from everybody was really positive so we’ll definitely do it again, We are hoping to get Henrik Zetterberg over for next year and we’re pretty confident we’ll get him, He won’t know for another month yet but he can’t see any reason why he can’t come.”
Simms is, undoubtedly, one of the hardest working people in British ice hockey. Yet he would be the first to admit that his journey through the sport has in part been down to a good old-fashioned measure of luck, good-fortune and coincidence. It all began in the early 1980s at his local ice rink on Hobs Moat Road in Solihull.
“I had a girlfriend in Birmingham and one day she asked me if I wanted to go skating, So we drove to the rink and when we got there, it was shut because an ice hockey game was on since we didn’t have anything else to do we decided to stay and watch the game,” Simms said. “It was between the Solihull Barons and Sunderland and I must have been about 19 or 20.”
“About two or three weeks later, that girlfriend had disappeared but I kept going to the rink and I went home and away. The season after, I volunteered to go on the supporters club as the Away Liaison Officer which basically meant I dealt with all the away travel.”
“At that time, the supporters club was run really well and the club was run really badly. So the supporters club ended up taking over the club in partnership with BRMB Radio.”
Simms quickly moved up the ranks in Solihull, becoming Communications Manager and latterly, Team Manager at the Barons. Through his links with player agents in North America he placed a number of big-name imports in the British leagues which included Darren Durdle, Ron Shudra and Steve Gatzos, all of whom have ranked amongst the highest points-scorers ever in British ice hockey.
Then, just as the Barons hit financial difficulties in the early 1990s, another piece of good-fortune came Simms’ way.
“There was an article in the press about a guy called David Gardner-Brown who had just secured the rights to play ice hockey out of Sheffield Arena,” Simms said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t have a team or a league to play in, I knew David as he was with the advertising agency that ran Heineken, when Heineken sponsored the league.”
Simms continued. “So I brokered a deal whereby Sheffield would pay off Solihull’s debts, Sheffield would then have a team in the Premier League which is where they wanted to be and Solihull would go into English Division One which is where they were going anyway, but at least they’d be debt free,” Simms said. “Anyway, that deal was going to happen but then right at the last minute the British Ice Hockey Association vetoed it.
Simms career then took a different turn. “I was offered the full-time position of running the Steelers but at that time nobody worked full-time in hockey so I politely declined but there was a player at Solihull called Ronnie Wood who was looking for a full-time position so I suggested that they offered the position to him,” Simms said. “They did, and he accepted.”
Simms helped Wood put the first Sheffield Steelers team together in a matter of eight days.
“The plan was to help Ronnie for six weeks then go back to Solihull, but I never did. I began doing the announcing at the Steelers’ games a few weeks later, I kept annoying Ronnie by telling him how bad our announcer was so he said ‘if you’ve got such a big mouth, you do it, So I did, Simms said.
Next came another twist, this time behind the scenes as a commentator on both radio and television and columnist. “The radio station heard me at the Steelers and they wanted someone to do their ice hockey commentary, so I started doing the radio,” Simms said. Having conquered the radio Simms turned his attention to paper after a vocal confrontation. “I had an argument with the editor at Powerplay about how bad his magazine was and he said, ‘if you can do any better, write an article’. So I did, and it’s now the best page in his magazine,” Simms said.
“The television job came about because the company that does the television for Sky TV, a company called Televideo, is based in Sheffield,” Simms said “They had heard me on the radio and just rang me up one day and said ‘come and have a go at this’.”
By his own admission, Simms is both “opinionated and passionate” about the sport and his desire to market and promote the product is evident through all of his media work. But does Simms think that the Elite League and the clubs within it do all they can to encourage new fans into their rinks?
“I can understand why people on the outside think they’re not doing all they can, If I was on the outside I would probably think the same, however, I’m fortunate enough to be on the inside and I understand the problem that the League and every club has and it all comes down to money,” Simms said.
“Clubs don’t make money, there is probably one team in the League that makes money and that is Nottingham. Sheffield Steelers just about washes its face, Coventry Blaze scrapes through, and Belfast Giants actually loses money,” Simms said. “For the League to employ people to market the sport would cost serious money, £100,000s.”
Simms continued with his take on the financial situation surronding teams in the UK. “The money just isn’t there, It is in other countries because the teams get TV revenue, In the UK the League has to pay Sky to be on television but we do our best,” Simms said. “The local press does a very good job for a minority sport Sheffield does a great job in Sheffield, Coventry does a great job in Coventry and Nottingham does a great job in Nottingham,”
Simms re-iterated the need for financial stabilty to push forward hockey in the UK. “Of course, we’d love a two-hour programme on radio chanel Talksport, and for £250,000 a year we could have one, We’d all love a Sky programme showing highlights of all 10 or 12 games played that week and for £250,000 we can, so long as all those clubs as well as paying that money, also invest in the appropriate TV camera equipment,” Simms said. “Realistically, though, how can Basingstoke Bison or Edinburgh Capitals or Hull Stingrays do that?.”
On the subject of Sky Sports, I asked Simms whether fans could look forward to another season of UK ice hockey on the television.
“We’re speaking with Televideo at the moment and they are fairly close to signing a contract, we think the show will be the same format but hopefully it will be better,” Simms said. “Nick Rothwell is looking to become more of a presenter, so he’ll probably have a special guest every week, leaving me to game-time.”
“Again, I know that a lot of people out there would like a highlights show. I completely agree, If they can persuade their club to invest £25,000 – £50,000 for exactly the right cameras that record on exactly the right format and then guarantee 100%, that 24 hours later the footage is with Televideo then we would have a highlights show, It’s as simple as that,” Simms said.
“The reality is you have Basingstoke which is run by a load of volunteers. That isn’t a criticism of them, but they simply don’t have the infrastructure to be able to buy and operate the equipment, If you go to the Bison games you’ll see that the guy who records the games simply stands on the top steps with a hand-held DVD camera, that’s the reality of it,” Simms said “You’re lucky to even get a DVD out of Edinburgh.”
“Having said all that, I’m sure there will be more highlights of games next season.”
Look out for Simmsy – Man behind the microphone Part Two as Simmsy talks about the up coming 2008-09 Elite league season.
Contact the author at Matt.kane@prohockeynews.com
Contact the photographer at Mark.tredgold@prohockeynews.com
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