It’s coming up to 10pm on a bitterly cold night in the middle of winter, but the Canterbury Cats are showing no signs of calling it quits.

They have just finished their first game together this season and are already beginning to warm down, when they are reminded that they agreed to practise a penalty shoot-out.

The players line up and take their turns one-on-one with the goalkeeper, celebrating when they score, and offering support to each other when they miss.

They may not want to be there, but they know they need to practise.

Watching on is their coach, Aaron Ford.

Fordo, as he is known to the players, has been involved with hockey his entire life.

“My whole family played the game, and I started playing when I was five,” he says.

Now 33, he’s turned his hand to coaching.

He first started when he suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury ten years ago.

A parent of a player from Christchurch Girls’ High School hockey club rang him up looking for his help and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Since then, he’s had two more ACL injuries, which brought an end to his playing career.

He took charge of the Canterbury Cats in 2012, and found instant success.

They won the National Hockey League that year, for the first time since 2002, and didn’t lose a single match along the way, the first time any team had done so.

His team didn’t have any Black Sticks, and so were unaffected by that year’s London Olympics campaign.

“We had everyone available to us, stayed down here, and went about our own business,” he says.

Their success was capped when they were recognised as Sport Canterbury’s team of the year.

Last year, they only dropped one game during round-robin play, but stumbled in the semi-finals, finishing fourth.

Now, they want their title back.

Ford’s had his preliminary squad together since the end of April.

They train on turf twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, and also do two to three gym sessions, and two conditioning sessions as well.

Ford says their first game, played against a Canterbury under-18 side last Thursday, was a chance to see how his players coped in a different environment.

“A lot of them are playing club hockey, but it’s certainly different playing with different players around you, so it was quite good to see how could cope playing our structure and our type of hockey.”

His type of hockey is a positive one.

“We want to play a fast, counter-attacking style of hockey, but we still want to make sure we have a solid defence,” he says.

It all comes down to space.

“We want to use the whole hockey field to stretch out the opposition when we get the ball and when we lose it, we’ve got to close down that space as quickly as possible,” he says.

In other words, they want to be playing across a massive surface, while their opponents are stuck on a tiny one.

The NHL is an intense competition, especially when compared with other representative sport in this country.

Teams play two games over a weekend at the end of August, one at home and one away, before the rest of the round robin and the finals take place in one week up in Auckland.

Ford has the Cats prepared to cope with the demanding schedule.

“The good thing is that the group we’ve got, everyone’s been involved with a lot of rep hockey, from underage stuff through to the Black Sticks, so nothing’s new to them,” he says.

Video analysis plays a big role in Ford’s coaching.

During games, he tries to talk to players about the things he sees, something that was clear last Thursday.

A move would go wrong, or one of the Cats would miss a goal-scoring chance, and he’d turn to the players gathered in the dugout, talking them through what should have been done.

Ford says players often don’t remember exactly what happened out on the field, so being able to show them video is a real asset.

His iPad is an essential companion.

‘I have all my trainings and all my drills on there,” he says.

“It makes it easy to throw a team talk together, and also i have a countdown clock, so if the big clock’s (at Marist Park) not working, it gets thrown up in the dugout.”

He is a builder by day, and often pulls out his iPad at lunch to jog his memory.

He’s already been over last week’s game.

“The biggest thing from last Thursday was we weren’t aggressive enough when we were pressing. We allowed them to hold the ball inside their own circle and inside their own 23-yard area,” he says.

The good thing is, there’s still a long time to go.

This year’s NHL is in the second week of September, well after the Canterbury club season is finished.

The Cats have had three players away with the Women’s Black Sticks at the World Cup in the Netherlands, all of whom are likely to be on duty at July’s Commonwealth Games as well.

Ford says they should all be on hand come tournament time.

“I’ve talked to all of them, and each one of them has said they are not only available but really keen to come back and play for Canterbury.”

He says that this year they’re making sure everything the team wants to do is put in place before the Black Sticks come back, so they can just slot in once they’re available.

Player availability is the least for Ford’s problems.

Playing hockey in Canterbury at the moment means making do.

The code lost its Porritt Park home in the February 2011 earthquake, leaving St Bede’s College’s Marist Park as the only water-based turf in the city.

That’s why the Cats have to train so late at night — it’s the only time slot available.

The turf is international quality, says Ford, but it’s the lack of facilities that’s a problem

As an example, he points out that Marist Park has tiny changing rooms.

“Ideally we’d like to have a room more like a meeting room, where I could show video footage,” says Ford.

There are also no showers, which makes it harder to properly recover after trainings and games.

Then there is the uncertainty over what the NHL games will look like.

Earlier this year, the International Hockey Federation pulled a fast one on the global hockey community, announcing that from September 1, hockey games will consist of four 15-minute quarters instead of two 35-minute halves.

Ford says teams haven’t been told yet whether the NHL will use the new format.

“We need to know as soon as possible so we can start planning ahead. It does change things up, so we want to know what we’re planning for.”

Marist Park is where the Cats’ NHL campaign will begin, when they play Wellington on August 30.

The NHL’s format makes this their only home game, and Ford and the Cats are eager to make a big deal of it.

“This year, we want to try and double (last year’s crowd), and make more of an effort to promote the game,” he says.

The Cats aren’t Ford’s only team, however.

He’s been involved with Harewood Hockey Club for 16 years, first as a player, and more recently as the coach of their women’s premier team, which has won the title the last two seasons.

He says there are differences between the two levels.

“With the NHL team, we try to act as though we’re professional and try and do everything the best we can,” he says.

“It’s different at club level because people have a lot of other things in their lives, and hockey is often not the main priority.

He says that his connection with the club is something that means a lot to him and he hopes it can continue.

Ford is clear about what his role is, no matter who he is coaching.

“The biggest thing that I try and do is that I spend a lot of time trying to think about hockey, trying to help them out anyway I can.”

‘I try and be hard on them, but I do make a conscious effort to try and get along with everyone, without being their best friends”

The game against the under-18 boys finished 5-5.

It may have been the Cats’ first together this year, but there was no shortage of effort.

They all looked exhausted afterwards — a result Fordo was surely proud of.