News Report

Coaches thoughts

Coach Cliff give his thoughts on our first games of 2024

• admin
• 10 January 2024

Hi Chieftains Fans,

It was great to see you all again at the weekend and was great to start the calendar year with a sold out home game. I hope you all had a nice Christmas and all the best to you all as we move into a New Year.  It was lovely to have a few weeks away from hockey but certainly felt like the time was right to be back in the routine, full steam ahead now until the end of the season.

Saturday was a frustrating game, I think realistically it looked like exactly what it was, a team who hadn’t played for 3 weeks against a team who had got their turkey off with a midweek game a couple of days earlier. When the fixtures came out I immediately thought that weekend was a tricky one, Slough are probably the fastest and youngest team in the league, and a bit of time off definitely affects you less when you’re younger, having said that we were sloppy in certain areas and whilst I don’t think 7-4 was a true reflection of the game, we certainly didn’t do enough to win against a team like that and it has to be viewed as a missed opportunity.

On Sunday we changed a couple of things tactically and turned up the intensity and I think it was possibly the best we have played if not all season then certainly for a few months. It was great to see the scoring spread throughout the lineup and defensively everyone bought in and when needed Jordan was there to do his job and clean up for us.

Tommy Huggett joined us late last week and after only 1 training session with the team he slotted in no problem at all and looked like he had been here the whole time, I’m looking forward to working with Tommy more as the season progresses and I know he will be a big part of the team for the remainder of the season. 

We move on now to play Oxford in their rink, always a tricky place to go, certainly one of the more unique rinks in the league, and whilst their season hasn’t gone as they may have wished at the outset, they’re certainly a team who can cause an upset any time especially on home ice.

I look forward to seeing those of you who travel on Sunday and the rest of you the following Sunday when we return to the Riverside.

Thanks for reading,

Cliff.