The 2014-2015 ice hockey season is upon us and with training camp coming to an end the team and the best supporters in the EIHL, the Purple Army, are all jacked up on Mountain Dew and ready to get underway.

The past two weeks at training camp have been great and the team is all ready looking like a serious contender for the Elite League title; but training camp isn't just to prepare the fellas for the rigors of the regular season it's also meant to get them and their families settled in to their new home for the next eight months.

Packing up all your stuff and hitting the road for eight months isn't easy and for the first time in my career I've learned it's even trickier when you have a five-month-old baby to lug around.

Fortunately, Gem (my wife) is able to keep the chaos in check and our son Jax is pretty easygoing and good-natured.

The week leading up to the first game of the year has proved to be a good one for my family as the apartment is all set-up, baby proofed and Jax has only poo'd on me once (so far)!

With my son not using my face as his toilet I've been able to focus on this weekend's big matches. Before I give you a preview of what the Clansmen are up against this weekend let me give you a quick recap of the past couple weeks for the boys.

For the first month, the amount of time we're able to spend in our home rink is limited. It's the one time in my life that I really want to punch Mickey Mouse and the rest of his Disney gang right in the face, as the Disney on Ice Show takes over Braehead Arena for the month of September.

This means that we play all our games on the road and practice at the Achenharvie ice arena.

While the ice arena is really nice, for five day's a week the fellas wake up at the crack of dawn to make the long 45-minute trek to practice.

The tight country roads should be a nice view but with the imports being from North America we're not accustomed to driving on the left or having massive lorries whiz by, just inches from our side mirrors. No worries though, hockey players are resilient and we make the best of our situations!

Over the past week we've played in three exhibition games; two against an Italian side, Asiago, and one against our affiliate club, Solway.

The Sloway game was great for coach Ryan Finnerty to analyze the talent available for call-ups.

Both Asiago games were a great test as the Italian clubs are considered to be very fast and skilled.

We lost the first game but came out and won the second. Neither team was overly concerned with the outcome, as exhibition is more to get the fellas used to playing with each other and used to the systems.

There are a lot of bright spots to look forward to as the Clansmen showed they posses plenty of skill and (unlike last season) toughness and grit, which is something the Glaswegians will be more than happy to watch.

With the team having a little bit of everything this year we should match up well against this weekends opponents.

The Belfast Giants are coming off a league-winning season and have assembled a team that can repeat, while the Hull Stingray's are always scrappy and difficult to play.

Look for your Clansmen to set the pace of both games with our physicality and discipline to play within our system.

If we can lock-in those two key aspects than the Purple Army should be celebrating two victories this weekend.