Photo by Luke Riley / lrileystudio
Saturday 2nd March – Moralee Division: Blackburn Hawks 10 – Widnes Wild 3
The Widnes Wild NIHL team had a disappointing weekend, suffering back to back defeats at the hands of north west rivals Blackburn Hawks - losing 10-3 away on Saturday and 3-7 at home at Planet Ice Widnes on Sunday.
The Wild came into the weekend’s games on the back of a 3-match losing streak, while Blackburn were on a high following their 21-6 two leg demolition of league leaders Billingham Stars the previous weekend in the Moralee Cup final.
Unfortunately for Widnes, the away game on Saturday went pretty much to current form and Blackburn raced to a 4-0 lead by the first interval.
Widnes eventually found the back of the net themselves with a powerplay goal from Matty Barlow in the 23rd minute punishing a Blackburn interference call but the Hawks hit back 90 seconds later with a shorthanded goal to restore the 4-goal cushion.
Gregor Donaldson fired in his first ever goal for Widnes on 26 minutes to raise hopes of a Wild fightback but these were soon quashed by a disastrous spell that saw Blackburn score 4 more goals to lead 9-2 at the second interval.
The Hawks edged further ahead on 43 minutes with their 10th goal of the game and Matty Barlow scored his second of the night 53 seconds later for Widnes to round off the scoring. Tempers boiled over after this as Bailey Thomson took exception to an overly robust challenge from former Wild player Calum Ruddick and was handed a 2+2 penalty for roughing plus a 10 minute misconduct call while Ruddick just got 2 minutes for roughing.
