News Report

Coaches thoughts….

Coach Cliff gives his thoughts on our cup semifinal weekend!

• admin
• 22 January 2025

Hi Chieftains Fans,

This could be very long or very short depending on how much detail I go into, but I would like to start with the most important thing, 14 skaters, 2 goalies, 5 goal deficit and we are into a cup final.

The less said about Saturday the better, needless to say there was a lot of soul searching, awkward but necessary conversations and self reflection that had to happen between the final buzzer and puck drop on Sunday, but not one person on or off the ice shirked their responsibilities or deficiencies and approached the second leg like grown men who needed to make amends.

Sunday was just one of those days, we knew we had to score and we had to score a lot of goals but first thing first we had to keep the door shut at the back and although light on numbers the 5 D Men we took to the game dug in and battled like warriors to let the forwards go to work at the other end of the ice, Lawds made a number of huge saves that sent us back up the ice the right way and we had something solid to build on. It was very tight and at the end of the first it looked unlikely but the 2 goals in the second gave us something to hold on to.  In the third we threw the kitchen sink at Streatham and we know when we are on fire we can score with the best teams in the league, we just kept going and going and digging in and got the rewards in the end with the OT winner.

I wouldn’t have blamed any of you if you stayed home on Sunday but the support and the noise when we scored was unbelievable and I would just like to thank everyone on behalf of the team for turning out in numbers and helping us get over the line.

We are back in action this weekend against the 2 teams either side of us in the table, we need to use the momentum from this weekend but also the lessons we learned from Saturday and also Sunday to keep our league campaign on track.

Thanks again for your support on either or both days over the weekend, we will see you on Saturday at the rink.

Cheers,

Cliff.