The Ice Dogs have had a positive response as they aim to reach 50 season members for 2012 following a breakout 2011 season on the ice. After reaching the semi-finals last year, there are plenty of things for fans to be excited about as the team aim to go a couple of steps further in 2012.

“The membership drives have been quite successful so far.  We’ve had two membership drives and are up to 26 members with 22 full season members,” Ice Dogs president Shane Rose said. “There may be another membership drive at the trial games to be scheduled before the season starts.”

In other news, the Ice Dogs are about to embark on a tryout period on Tuesday the 6^th, 13^th and 20^th of March from 8:30pm at the LCC Sports Centre for any players wanting to be considered for the team. Once those sessions have been completed, the Sydney Ice Dogs team will be officially announced and will be put through their paces on Saturday the 7^th, 14^th and 21^st of April against currently unknown opponents. Rose said they Ice Dogs would ask all teams in the league to come and warm up for the season, although he doesn’t expect too many takers on his offer.

“We are most likely going to try and get the Bears and we are going to send out some invitations to some other teams such as Newcastle and Canberra to see if they would like to come and do some trial games with us,” Rose explained.

“We are going to send it to all teams but I don’t think some of the teams are going to come from Melbourne or Perth to come and play us in a trial but who knows, there might be a team that is quite happy to travel out and play us. I doubt it because it is an expense but we’ll put it out there and see what happens.”

However, when the trial games go ahead, the team will be missing Australian representatives in Scott and Todd Stephenson, Andrew White and Tomas Manco who will be in Poland leading the Mighty Roos charge in the IIHL’s Division I World Championships.

By Andrew McMurtry