EIHL’s revamped Challenge Cup still needs sense of urgency and excitement

You could take a sabbatical from work, go travelling round Europe or watch your child move from nursery to primary school in the time it takes a club to get through the round robin qualifiers.

We’re one month into the competition and it’s here to stay until late November. How on earth can it take three long months to whittle 10 teams down to four semi-finalists?

The Elite League’s own fans’ survey generated more feedback on the Challenge Cup than any other topic - even DOPS! - and confirmed that spectators didn’t much care for it. You can add a host of players and coaches to that list.

In summer, it set about overhauling the format of the competition and, in the words of Mike Hicks, head of operations, came up with a solution that worked for all teams, improved its sporting integrity - not sure anyone actually explained what that actually meant - and one he hoped would “create greater excitement during the round robin phase.”

One month in, it’s fair to say it really hasn’t met any of those targets. The Challenge Cup still feels tired, far too drawn out, and about as dull as the third-fourth place play-off at the finals weekend.

Mixing and matching cup and league competition every weekend is not only clunky, it makes it impossible to target one piece of silverware at a time.

The section winners go straight into the semi-finals, along with the runners-up in Group A - only in hockey could ten teams be split six and four instead of two lots of five, but let’s not go there. The fourth semi-final spot goes to the winner of a one-off “play-in” game between the Group B runners-up - that could be Fife Flyers - and the third-placed team in Group A. So you can finish third, well off the pace needed to top your table and still bag a semi final place - that sounds as daft on paper as it does in reality.

The revamp feels more like tinkering round the edges than a definitive overhaul to create a competition that is short and sharp and genuinely exciting, but that is what happens when it is designed by committee.

And the biggest barrier remains the way it wraps itself round the league schedules for three long months.

Flyers opening game on September 7 will be a distant memory by the time they meet Glasgow Clan for the final time on Saturday, November 30. So will their last home game on October 27 as they finish with three on the road. The club also has the hard sell of a midweek visit from Belfast for a game that isn’t part of anyone’s season ticket - £23 for a Wednesday night out, plus a booking fee which means you’ll get pennies back from £25 won’t tick many folks’ boxes no matter how hard they try to sell it.

By November 30, the Christmas decorations will be up and a tournament that in effect is the successor to the old Autumn Cup - will be past its sell-by date.

I may be wrong, but don’t recall; the Benson & Hedges Cup ever dragging on for so long. Teams rattled off their qualifying groups in a matter of weeks, and it was done and dusted even before the first imports had been cut in Durham. Well, some seasons …

Times may have changed, but a curtain-raising competition should still be completed with a sense of urgency. Maybe next season …?