Listen: Long Distance Fanatics — Jon from the UK

Please excuse the self-promotion. I apologize.

For the past six months or so I’ve been developing an idea for a podcast that features Internationals who are fans of American sports teams.

Since I’ve grown up a big Everton fan, I’ve always had people from England, and more specifically Liverpool, ask me how and why Everton. I’m sure a lot of American soccer fans are not new to the experience.

Whether it be here or on Twitter, I’ve always been fascinated by foreign Islander fans, especially from countries where hockey isn’t popular. While this show won’t be Islander-focused, I wanted to record a pilot episode with an Islander fan so I could get of kind the feel for how it should go.

The episode features Jon Hagerty (@JonnyH85), an Islander fan originally from Wales and now living in London. Jon provides some great insight into the hockey culture in the UK, what the EIHL is like, and also told a wonderful story about the power of Nassau Coliseum.

If you are kind enough to listen, please be advised that this is just the first episode and I am learning on the fly in regards to editing. Dan does all the editing for Islanders Anxiety, and god bless him for that because I’m incompetent and he’s very good at it.

I view this episode as a kind of soft opening. Mostly, I’m just interested to see if people think this is a unique/worthy idea.

If you lot have any feedback, I’m very grateful to hear it. Please note that I know the sound quality isn’t great and I apologize for the clicking noise in the beginning of the show. For some reason my computer kept trying to go to sleep during the first part of the show and I didn’t know what else to do.

As far as listening options, right now I just have it up on soundcloud and will try to figure out how to get it up on iTunes and such.

Thanks so much and please enjoy,

Michael