The Connah’s Quay Cobras rounded off their first year of competition with a comprehensive 10 –3 victory over Widnes based Halton Huskies in a challenge match at Deeside Leisure Centre on Sunday.
The game started well for the Cobras as Slavomir Sykora fired in the opening goal with just 55 seconds on the clock. Less than 2 minutes later, the score was 2-0 after a strike from Luke Wainwright and further goals from Sam Krempasky and Stewart Cutting saw the home side leading 4-0 at the first period break.
The second period opened with a second goal for Wainwright, to bring the score to 5-0, but the Huskies kept on battling and were eventually rewarded with two goals of their own within the space of a minute of each other around the half-way mark.
The Cobras fought back and three more goals late in the second period – one from Sykora and two from Krempasky to round off his hat-trick – saw them leading 8-2 with 20 minutes left to play.
A first goal of the night for Kenny Williams edged Connah’s Quay yet further ahead in the 52nd minute, picking up on a great pass from Ken Valyear, although this was countered when the Huskies scored their third and final goal of the game 3 minutes later. But the Valyear / Williams combination paid dividends again with just 61 seconds left on the clock to round off an impressive victory - and to cap an all round superb team performance, netminder Paul Jones kept out a Penalty Shot as well.
This was the Cobras’ second win in a row after beating the Shropshire Huskies back in July and they can be pleased with the progress they have made in their first season, having only started to train together as a team in January.
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| Cobras captain Evan McKinney presents the MVP awards to Dominic Gray for Halton and |
The Connah’s Quay Cobras end the 2023 season with a record of 2 wins and 2 defeats from their 4 challenge matches, and they also finished in a creditable second place at the Sheffield RecFest tournament.
You can follow their fortunes on their Facebook page HERE
