Tuesday 8 December 2015

Laidler Report: Widnes Wild 8 - Bradford Eagles 4

The Widnes Wild returned to home action on Sunday evening to face the Blackburn Eagles in an NIHL Laidler Conference league game. 

This however was the follow on from Saturday nights clash between the two sides over in Blackburn. Goals from Scott McKenzie  (2), Geoff Wigglesworth (2), Sheldon Cassidy, George Crawshaw & Michal Fico saw the Wild leave Lancashire with 2 points.

The game was somewhat marred by a very nasty injury to Wild player and fans favourite Pavel Vales. A stick to the face sending the Wild player hurling to the Ice and requiring hospital and dental treatment.

Sundays game started with the Eagles piling on the pressure and grabbing an early advantage. Michal Fico quickly responded on the power play but Blackburn managed to get a go ahead goal to give the Lancashire side a 2-1 lead heading into the first period break.

Following on from the previous evening, the Wild players were showing extreme class by not retaliating to some real nasty stick work from the Eagles players. The second period would end 4-4, with Wild goals coming from Shaun Dippnall, Kieron, Strangeway & a second from Michal Fico. 

The third period is where the Wild showed their true grit. Some slick hockey opening up the tired Eagles defence to score 4 unanswered goals. Scott McKenzie (2), Shaun Dippnall & Geoff Wigglesworth rounding off the scoring for the Halton side. 

Four points was the call from Coach Mckenzie and that's what he got. A delighted Coach had this to say about the weekends results and incidents;

'A really gritty performance from the guys. Of course we made mistakes throughout the weekend but we never really looked beaten at any stage. Blackburn play a really physical game which in turn gave us a lot of powerplays, I think that's where we really dominated over the 2 games, our powerplay was great. It is very unfortunate what happened to Pavel Vales, no one likes to see anyone get hurt and as a club it is our duty to protect our players and make sure we help them at every cost. We are not happy with the way Pavel was hurt and we will deal with it accordingly.'

The Wild have one more league game of 2015 against Altrincham Aces on Sunday 13th December. The next home fixture is the Charity game on the 27th of December, 17:30 face off at Silver Blades, Widnes.

Photo: Widnes Player Coach Scott McKenzie slots in his penalty shot to make the score 6-4 on Sunday evening. (Geoff White - www.gw-images.co.uk)