Back Up There started as a bit of a joke. I went to a hockey game where the visiting team only brought one netminder, and joking about why they didn't have their backup goalie became Learning To Count, where the Eagles accidentally leave their backup, Jack, at a motorway service station.

That wasn't the only explanation I had for what had happened to the missing backup, though, and so in in sickness and in the Pumas almost leave Ryan behind because he's ill, and then in Cooperwatch the Blizzard deliberately try to leave Coop behind because he's just that annoying.

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(In reality, sometimes lower league UK hockey teams only bring one goalie to an away game and just keep everything crossed that they don't break the other one, because they don't have an endless supply of call-ups for emergencies. If it all goes wrong one of the other players has to get changed and get in the net...)

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From that point on the world began to spiral - I'd had an idea in the back of my head for a long time about a hockey team who all lived in the same house, and it seemed obvious to me that that story belonged in the same world - this would eventually become Hector's Boys.

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For a summary of which teams and characters feature in which series, click here

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Each team has developed a personality - some of them started as stereotypes, but most of the teams have had their moment in the spotlight now and when the players gain identities, so do the teams they play for.

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The Blizzard are Matt Cooper's team. From the original concept of the team who want to get rid of their irritating backup goalie, they became talkative, good-natured, and always ready for a lighthearted prank. They're one of the easiest teams to write, partly because Coop has such a strong voice. The Blizzard are typically a mid-table team.

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The Cobras are the goon team. At the point of writing this page, Puckdrop is still in the process of publication, so we'll get to know them from the inside rather than just seeing them through the eyes of other teams who only know them as not being that great at hockey and always being ready for a fight. As a general rule the Cobras don't win a lot of games, and tend to scrape along at the bottom of the league.

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The Eagles are one of the stronger teams in the league, and although Jack was the first protagonist the player that everybody knows is their no1 netminder, Karl Mkrstchjan (aka Psycho Karl). Karl's known for his temper and aggressive  attitude, but his teammates are loyal to him and they have skilled players. They're the kind of team that are tough to play.

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The Griffins are one of the less well known teams. Their first story centered around backup netminder Will, who finds himself homeless mid-season, and they don't show up as distinct personalities in stories about other teams, prior to Puckdrop. (They're probably the one you can't remember when you try to list the teams.)

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The Huskies are the team who all live in the same house (pretty much). Their story was a lot longer than anything in the series up to that point, and all of the players have distinct personalities. The Huskies were the joke team, the team that everybody could beat even on a bad night, and Hector's Boys is the story of how they started to turn that around.

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The Piranhas are another weak team. They're Damien's team, and Two Person Assembly Required was conceived as the story where nothing really happens - although from the moment Damien gets called up to the Piranhas, his life gets pretty busy...

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The Pumas are regularly top of the league. They featured in Consequences, a story about a guy from a D/s lifestyle trying to cope in the real world and the support he gets from his teammates. This was supposed to be the story of Seb and Josh, but the legacy belongs to Deets, an Austrian rookie struggling to find his feet. Deets is the guy in a TV series who was supposed to be in two episodes of season one, and by season two he's showing up in the title credits. Seb and Josh own the main story, but most of the DVD extras focus on Deets.

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The Saxons have the longest history within the Back Up There world, because they're the team that Steve "Woody" Woods grew up dreaming of playing for, and Taking The Long Way Round follows his career over multiple seasons. They're another team where most of the players didn't have distinct personalities, to the point that even in the 24th story in the Back Up There series I had to invent new characters just to let them ice a complete line.

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The Scorpions are another of the stronger teams - enjoying a friendly rivalry with the Pumas that's partly geographic and partly spurred on by the Lewis brothers, one of whom plays for each team. The Scorpions have ended up as one of the most LGBTQ friendly teams, with openly gay and bisexual players supported by their teammates.

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The Tornadoes are the team that nobody else likes - unlike the overly aggressive Cobras, who are also pitied for their consistently poor results, the Tornadoes have a history of winning. The team has money, unlike some of their rivals, and they have the skilled players and top quality equipment to show for it. The Tornadoes get their turn centre-stage in And the sand runs down, when backup Andrew has to take a break from figuring out his own future and step up when the starting netminder quits unexpectedly.

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The series is supposed to be about the backup netminders, but along the line other characters have pushed their way into the spotlight. 

You're more likely to find a story focused on a defenseman rather than a forward, however, giving away my own not-so-secret preferences.

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The league has six established enforcers between the ten teams. The pure enforcers are George "Tiny" Mason of the Huskies, a loyal friend to his teammates and a goon to everybody else, Mike Kirkman of the Saxons, who's not the brightest guy and has formed a friendship with George where neither of them remember how it started, and Craig "Patty" Patterson of the Cobras who's also known league-wide for not being smart enough to avoid being goaded into starting the fight. In addition to these, the Tornadoes have Tom "OB" O'Brien, a large Canadian teddy bear who fights clever, and the Lewis brothers. Josh Lewis plays for the Pumas, and older brother Jamie plays for the Scorpions, and they're also both very capable of putting the puck in the net. Despite the team rivalries, the brothers are close - to the point of living together - and although each of them is always prepared to stick up for their teammates, they won't fight each other - and they won't fight George Mason.

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