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Every Saturday when the Florida Firecats are home, Christina Thomas parks her 37-foot RV under the Germain Arena marquee, sets up a few lawn chairs on the grass and watches the good times come together.

This weekend will be the same.

“I’m going down there,” the Cape Coral resident promised. “I just won’t have any food or alcohol.”

Evidently, she can’t.

Not anymore.

Thomas has been tailgating at Germain Arena, she says, since the summer of 2001, late in the Firecats’ first season. The parties have grown through the years — more people, more food, more beer. She eventually found a friend in Naples resident Brett Sargeant, who brought his Airstream to the arena and parked it under the same sign.

But what the Firecats fans do this weekend won’t be considered a tailgate party. Not if you go by the ground rules the arena has in place.

No alcohol. No open flames.

Thomas and the other arenafootball2 diehards received the news prior to last weekend’s game. They were told they couldn’t tailgate there anymore.

“It’s always been our practice,” said Germain Arena president Craig Brush, also part owner of the Florida Everblades hockey team. “We speak to anyone that we don’t allow tailgating. We’re not vigilantes; it’s just that there’s a liability issue.”

The ban on tailgating at Everblades games has always been a hot topic.

But Thomas and Sargeant, the driving forces behind the Firecats parties, say they never knew they were doing anything wrong.

They just kept showing up, turning that patch of grass into their pregame party pad. They tossed beanbags there. Drank beer there.

“It’s a social thing,” Sargeant said. “The games became a secondary aspect of it.”

Did anyone notice?

“I think it’s been said before,” Brush said, when asked if the group of Firecats fans knew not to tailgate.

Thomas denies that.

She figures an article in the Naples Daily News a few weeks ago — a color story featuring the tailgaters — triggered the ban.

“We’ve been doing this for seven years,” Thomas said. “We’re just now hearing about it.”

Indeed, the word is out.

As fans entered the Germain Arena parking lot last weekend, they were greeted by a sign at the entrance that hadn’t been there before.

“No tailgating,” it read.

Thomas, who generally arrives hours before kickoff, didn’t see the sign. She was busy hosting a party on the other end of the complex.

This one got broken up.

Thomas and Sargeant say security officials brought the news, saying the tailgating ban was to protect revenue generated by food and beverage sales.

“Fans are going to buy food,” Brush said of the claim. “We know that. They can go to one of the malls and eat there if they want. We don’t think we have the market cornered on food sales. That’s not what this is about.”

Michael F. Hornung, a Fort Myers attorney, has known about the policy for years. He says he’s twice represented clients charged with resisting without violence after being asked not to tailgate at Firecats games.

“I guess the question is,” said Hornung, an Everblades season-ticket holder, “what is tailgating?”

For years, Thomas, Sargeant & Co. painted a picture of it. They listened to music. They watched TV. They drank and cooked.

Thomas knows she won’t be allowed to put out the grill or open an ice chest full of beer. But she hopes the spot beneath the sign will stay alive.

And yes, she’s bringing the RV.

“We’re out there to have a good time on our day off,” she said. “That’s what this is about.”

Brush says that’s OK.

He says the fans are allowed to arrive early, gather in the parking lot and pass the time. He says they can pack sandwiches and sodas.

But no alcohol. And no open flames.

“We don’t want to take that risk,” Brush said. “It’s not what our insurance company dictates.”