ENL - Whitley Warriors v Solway Sharks 6-3 - Sunday, March 06, 2016

Once again a huge thank you to Bobby Dixon for supplying this weeks game report, whilst I travelled back from the States.
Well that's it for another season as far as home fixtures are concerned, we still have 3 away games to go as well as the play-off weekend, we finished off the home season with the following record,
played 16: won 14: drew 2: lost 0: scored 88: conceded 34:
not a bad home record at all.
Solway brought a short bench with only 11 skaters and 1 netminder, but then we have saw this all before with Solway and they are still capable of turning teams over with their short bench, the 1st period was a very tight affair with neither team creating too many goal scoring opportunities, the Warriors opened the scoring with an unassisted goal from coach David Longstaff, he seemed to be looking for a pass but with no Warriors players in sight took it upon himself to slot it calmly past Kieran Hobbins in the Solway net, I hate to bemoan about referee decisions but I thought Michael Evans had a shocker in this game, one incident that springs to mine is when Josh Maddock was hooked centre ice and got no call from Evans however as is usual with referees they see the retaliation and he saw the “attempted” spear and dished out a 2+2+10 attempt to spear penalty, Warriors penalty killing unit done its job and the period ended with a slender 1-0 lead to Whitley.
2 minutes into the 2nd period we increased our lead again Longstaff was the scorer assisted by Richards and DJ Good, another goal where he managed to find the smallest of holes in the netminders defence and exploit it, another great finish. On 23:14 we got called on a too many men penalty, wasn't a line change mistake that we got caught on either we had 6 skaters on ice playing, just one of those mistakes that shouldn't happen but they do from time to time, unfortunately Sharks capitalised on the man advantage and halved the deficit with Cingel firing home from range, assisted by Coulter and Wallace, a couple of minutes later Warriors scored a fantastic goal, a goal which had the home fans on their feet giving the standing ovation it deserved, a fantastic mazey run by Harry Harley through the Sharks defence to score a brilliant goal he was assisted by Richards and Longstaff en route to the net. On 29 minutes the Sharks suffered a calamity of errors in the defence when Wallace took out Hobbins to leave a gaping net wide open for Kyle Ross to have the easiest wrap around he'll ever score, just after the halfway mark Harley's back handed clearance cleared everybody and everything including the plexi glass with the puck heading in my direction the referee was calling a delay of game penalty and again the Sharks powerplay unit found the net this time it was Coulter who grabbed the goal, assisted by Murray and Tonnar, the period ended with a scoreline of 4-2 in the Warriors favour
2 and half minutes into the 3rd period the Warriors increased their lead to 5-2 when Callum Watson scored, assisted by Tinsley and Holland, the Sharks got one back with a fantastic goal scored by Struan Tonnar, he was assisted by Murray and Fowley, Tonnar was skating in on goal and lifted the puck about 6 inches off the ice and tapped it out of mid air to clear the pads of Lawson, at 53:52 the Warriors completed the scoring when Ben Richards scored and the assist going to Craig Johnson.
Final score Warriors 6, Sharks 3, sending out a message to a possible play-off opponent,
MOTM for the visitors went to Coulter
MOTM for the Warriors went to player coach David Longstaff
May I take this opportunity to thank all the players and staff for a fantastic season, lets hope we can take our fine form into the play-offs and bring home some silverware, good luck to the lads for the remainder of the season.


Other Results
Saturday, March 05
Telford v Solihull 4-7
Solway v Sheffield Spartans 6-2


Sunday, March 06
Solihull v Sheffield Senators 6-1
Billingham v Telford 4-4