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Cliff remains at the helm for the 2024/25 season

• admin
• 15 March 2024

Chieftains are delighted to announce that Head Coach Lewis Clifford will be remaining at the club for next season.

The former MK Lightning coach has impressed the Chieftains management this season. After securing the league runners-up spot with a big four point winning weekend on the road. The team has really began to gel over the last few games and the fans are really excited about the forthcoming end of season play-offs. But for management and coaching staff there is never an end-of-season. Hockey is a year round business and for the first time in a few seasons the club goes into the team recruitment stage with stable management/coaching structure in place. Great news for the Black ’n’ Gold!

When asked about another season at Riverside Cliff wrote: After being in the same place forever, coming to a new club was stepping into the unknown a little bit for me, every club is different and has their own way of doing things and their own personalities which you have to learn to fit in with and be a part of.  Everyone in Chelmsford was so easy to get on with and welcoming, that transition didn’t take long at all, whilst a season isn’t a long time really, in some ways it feels like I have been here for years.

This season is far from over, we have a couple of weeks to prepare and manage our way through before we start playing for real for another trophy again, and we are all fully committed to that process.

Despite the fact we are ‘all in’ on the playoffs and the season is far from over, it is important that we start looking forward, and it is in my nature to be unsatisfied with a second place finish and a cup semifinal loss, on the flip side it is probably also unrealistic for me to expect to come here for 7 months and expect to change the world, so I guess I will have to come back again next year and get back to work!

I would like to thank all of ‘The Black & Gold Army’ for making me so welcome, the countless people who volunteer to help the team get on the ice every weekend, Derek and Karen who have been a pleasure to work for and with, and mostly the boys, new and existing who I have asked a lot of this year and been demanding on many of them to change and whilst it’s taken time to get there, they have listened to me banging on all season and asking for things they probably haven’t been asked for for quite some time.

We are entering the most exciting time of the year now, where anything can happen, we will need to be at our best, and we will need you all behind us, lets see if we can make the end of this season special!

So welcome back to Riverside and the Black ’n’ Gold for a second season Cliff!