Young Guns Shoot Bison to Silverware

Bison 5 Invicta Dynamos 2

Basingstoke Bison retained the Oliveira 4 x 4 competition trophy they won last season with an emphatic 5-2 final victory over Invicta Dynamos at Planet Ice last night. The competition win was due in no small part to the contribution of several of Bison’s young guns – Jacob Corson-Heron, Cameron Wynn, Andy Melachrino and Connor Standing. Couple that with impressive performances from the older hands and all is looking rosy in the Bison garden, but we won’t don our tinted coloured specs quite yet.

Having looked a trifle laboured in achieving a 1-1 draw against the Dynamos in the round robin game played immediately before the final, Bison didn’t hang about this time. They raced into a 4-0 lead with only 9 minutes on the clock.

The first was scored after some excellent work by Andy Melachrino. With a surname like that Andy sounds like someone from the Godfather, but he prefers to engage in the more wholesome pursuit of playing hockey than leaving severed horse heads in people’s beds. (How did they do that without waking the guy up? I digress). Andy (let’s call him “Machine Gun”  Melachrino from now on) fired in a pass from behind the goal line to the front of the net and there was Jacob Corson-Heron, the man with a double barrelled name and a double barrelled shot, to fire in past a hapless David Wride in the Invicta Net.

1-0 to Bison became 2-0 within a couple of minutes. Set on his way by Bison skipper, Tosh Redmond, Cameron “Popeye” Wynn skated across the face of the goal and lifted in a top shelfer. As if he thought that wasn’t enough of a contribution, Cam made it 3-0 in the 7th minute and only 3 minutes later. This time the playmaker was Greg “The Specs” Owen who set up Cam to score with a backhander in front of goal.

3-0 became 4-0 only 2 minutes later. Bison were running riot. A long pass from “Machine Gun” Melachrino set up Chunky Joe Greener just inside the Invicta blue line. Joe lifted his stick and sent in a crisp slapshot with considerably more force than would be needed to drive a fork into a Pukka pie. And there was Greg “The Specs” in front of the net to deflect past the goaltender.

A bizarre incident then occurred. A penalty for roughing was called. It was the only penalty of the entire tournament. The miscreant was Greg “Chubbs” Chambers. Exactly what “roughing” had involved I did not see.  Luckily for him the sentence meted out was 2 minutes sitting on a nice comfortable bench rather than 5 years hard labour, but “down the steps” he went.

Invicta then rallied and reduced the arrears from 0-4 to 2-4 with a couple of well taken goals in the 13^th and 16^th minutes respectively. The first was scored by Canadian, Justin Noble with a noble goal indeed. From a pass by Bison old boy, Callum Best (glad to see he still possesses his rosy cheeks which give him a somewhat misleading cherubic appearance), Noble took the puck from behind the goal line and rifled in a top shelf wrist shot from distance. The second was an unassisted goal from the impressive Peter Vaitanen scored in a not too dissimilar way.

With 2 minutes remaining Bison cemented the win with a 5^th and final goal. It was a sweet move involving Chunky Joe and Greg “The Specs”. Slick one time passing from Joe to Greg to “Chubbs” cut through the defense as easily as if they were slicing a loaf of bread and there was “Chubbs” to put the icing on the cake with a back door one timer into the net. The move had considerably more artistic merit than Danien Hirst’s half a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde.

At the end of the game and indeed a most entertaining tournament, keenly contested by all except the Bracknell Bees, Bison skipper Tosh Redmond went up to collect the Oliveira (Basil d’?) 4 x 4 trophy, which is about the size of an egg cup, but what the hell, it’s silverware!

Man of the match for the Dynamos was a very impressive Peter Vaisanen. Perhaps we’ll see him back in the EPL some day – his short spell with the Steeldogs was cut short by injury. An easy and indeed most popular choice for Bison MoM was Cameron “Popeye” Wynn with 2 goals in the final and 4 for the tournament. He looked sharp and linked up very well with his line mates. 

Words also for some of Cam’s team mates. Carl Graham, normally a stay at home blue liner, scored a wonderful forward’s goal in the game against Bracknell. Joe Rand looked a constant threat, linked well with his team mates and scored 2+2 for the tournament. Greg Owen ended with a goal and no fewer than 4 assists. And a very solid performance between the pipes from Connor Standing, who played in 3 of the 4 games. He showed his ability in the penultimate (that’s the one before last) game, first saving an exocet slapshot from the Slovak Cannon, Marcel Petran and then, only seconds later, raising his catcher to pluck Alan Lack’s vicious wrist shot out of the air with the same degree of consummate ease with which King Kong would have swatted a biplane. A final word for Ryan Sutton, who in the round robin game against the Dynamos, set up Joe Greener in front of goal with some wonderful skating and stick handling. He skated diagonally across the goal from the boards, leaving everyone for dead before delivering a tasty drop pass for Joe to gobble up.