News Report

Coaches thoughts.....

Coach Cliff gives his thoughts on our difficult double weekender

• admin
• 28 January 2025

Hi Chieftains Fans,
 
I hope you are all well and having a good week, it is finally nearly the end of January (at last) and February has a lot of excitement to come.
 
I think it is safe to say that the weekend didn’t go to plan, 2 very different games against 2 very different but good teams and ultimately we came up short on both days.
 
On Saturday we faced Slough for the third time this season, we were looking to finally break the curse we seem to have against them this year, but that wasn’t to be.  We started the game way too open, and didn’t seem to be able to break out of this for the majority of the game, however we managed to just hang in there to be leading with about 4 or so minutes to go, at this point I have no idea really what happened.  After a whole period where it seemed the referee had decided that penalties weren’t on the agenda he decided to call one on us and that powerplay put paid to our chances of seeing the game through which it did seem despite our poor play off the puck we were going to do.  It is very rare that I allow players to use the referees as an excuse but I just don’t understand how the bar had been raised significantly for the whole third period and then he decided to call that at an absolutely crucial point in the game, we then went to overtime where no one could break the deadlock and we ultimately lost in the shootout.  Whist the referees decision was absolutely baffling, it doesn’t change the fact that we were way too open for pretty much the whole game, giving away chance after chance and if it wasn’t for Jordan in the pipes and some goal line clearances we could have been well behind by that point and the game would have been done and dusted.
 
On Sunday we knew where we had to be better and we did a way better job, Streatham is a tough place to go and we knew from one week previous that it would not be an easy game, we showed good resolve and defended well, the first period I think they were on top of us a bit, but the second we had the majority of the play and went into the third still at 0-0 which at that point we were comfortable with.  When the final period started a couple of individual mistakes led to 2 goals against and we spent the rest of the period trying to batter the doors down but it was just a night where we couldn’t score, we had chance after chance and missed or got foiled by Danny Milton and when we pulled Jordan they went down the other end and put one in the empty net, it is a tough one getting shut out, and there were ample chances to score at 0-0, 1-0 and 2-0 but we just weren’t able to convert the chances.  One thing I never get annoyed about is when guys miss chances, there are many errors in a game that are avoidable or made out of lack of concentration but no one is ever trying to NOT score a goal, it was just one of those nights.
 
Anyway there is only one way you can look which is forwards as that’s the way you’re heading, we have a well needed weekend off this week which will hopefully give guys a chance to rest and recover from some knocks and injuries and we will come back stronger for the games the following weekend.
 
Thanks a lot for your support over the weekend, see you in a week and a bit.
 
Cliff.