Sheffield Steelers owner Tony Smith says pressure is on to lift Elite League silverware in 2023-24

The Steelers’ squad has started to assemble in Sheffield in the past few days to begin preparations for the 2023-24 Elite League campaign which gets underway for them on September 23 with a regular season clash at home to Coventry Blaze.

Prior to that, the Steelers have four warm-up games, the first of which comes in a home-and-away double-header against Nottingham Panthers on September 9 and 10 before the following weekend sees them fine tune their systems further with back-to-back encounters against Cardiff Devils.

For head coach Fox, it marks a fourth full season in charge, his one trophy success coming at the very start of his tenure in South Yorkshire when he helped the Steelers end their 17-year wait to lift the Challenge Cup with a memorable 4-3 win in Cardiff against the Devils.

Covid then intervened and, after a runners-up spot in the behind-closed-doors Elite Series, Fox has seen his team come up short in the two subsequent campaigns in terms of silverware.

Both seasons saw the Steelers well-positioned to clinch a regular season title for the first time since 2016, only to then fade away.

But, despite some calls for him to go by sections of the Steelers’ fanbase, team owner Smith has remained loyal to Fox.

He does admit, however, that the coming year is a huge one for the club.

“I love to put pressure on people and the pressure is on this year, there’s no doubt about it,” said Smith.

“We’ve been stable for quite some time now and now the other side of it is the fun side when we can start to look at winning trophies. We’ve won one, the Challenge Cup just before Covid.”

Smith says any failure to land a trophy – of any description – will not be for a lack of effort on the part of the organisation.

“We’ve not held back this year, we’ve given it everything we can - we do every year but this year’s a little bit special,” added Smith.

“Now we have to get down to the serious stuff of winning trophies because that’s what our fans deserve.”