Essex Men Discover That The Only Way Is Bison

Bison 4 Chelmsford Chieftains 1

22/11/14

The Chelmsford Chieftains visited Planet Ice for the cup clash with Bison last night, having been overrun by 5-1 in the home fixture against the Basingstoke icemen in early September. Was it going to be a walkover? To draw an equestrian analogy, would Bison’s thoroughbred race horse run rings around the Chieftains’ Hercules (who? Steptoe’s carthorse of course). As it turned out, Bison playing at three quarter speed, with Vantroba, Sheppard, Wales, Selby and Reynolds all missing from the line up, easily overcame the Essex men, but only by 4-1. In a competition which has seen double figure scores notched up by EPL teams against their ENL counterparts, the Chieftains must have been satisfied with their respectable defeat. But they did have their moment of glory, as I shall relate.

That moment came on 8 minutes when the Chieftains snatched the lead with a goal which came out of the blue, out of left field and out of nowhere. What happened? Julian Smith delivered the perfect defense splitting pass for Ross Brears to skate onto. Brears couldn’t have skated forward any faster than if he had been pursued by a pack of rabid stoats. He wasn’t going to be caught. He executed a clever deke and slotted the puck over the line. It was 1-0 Chieftains. The Chieftains’ faithful, Essex men/women to a man/woman I am sure, vocalised their approval of the goal in estuary English. As for their Bison counterparts, it would not have been surprising if at least some of them had fallen to the floor in a dead faint from the shock of it all, but I noticed no-one doing such.

It wasn’t until the 16^th minute that Bison leveled the game up. Lumberjack Joe Rand fed Bison skipper Nicky Chinn who worked the puck out from behind the goal line to Aaron ”Billy” Connolly to smash home from in front of the net. It was 1-1 and the goal brought a feeling of relief to the Bison backers. Bison’s own Man of Steel hoisted a baby elephant over his head in celebration, Mystic Jo threw her tarot cards in the air and Oxobloke poured himself a celebratory cup of gravy from his flask.

There were no more goals in the period and it ended 1-1 with Bison clearly the dominant team, outshooting the Essex men by 18 to 7. Could they continue in the same vein in the next period? Well in actual fact they couldn’t and P2 was much flatter with the Chieftains almost matching Bison shot for shot. However, Bison finishing was much improved with a 2 goal return for 8 shots on the Chieftains’ net. The first came on 29 minutes and was a power play goal. Brandon Aycliffe was done for tripping and was invited to rest awhile. Alas for him, the rest lasted only 11 seconds. Bison besieged the Chieftains’ defensive zone, working the puck from side to side and around until Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird was presented with an opportunity of a slap shot from the point. He gave it all he had and Joe’s clapper hit the back of the net for 2-1 Bison with the goaltender beaten for sheer pace. Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov and Cuddly Joe Greener were awarded assists.

4 minutes later it was 3-1 Bison. Cuddly Joe Greener’s set up was quite superb. He picked up the puck on halfway wide left and cut a path forward and around the back of the net as easily as if he had been a buzz-saw wheel from Rufus Roughcut’s Buzz Wagon. He emerged at the back door, but delayed his pass. Eventually he saw the opportunity and found Long Ciaron Long in the slot with space for a shot. Long Ciaron, who subsequently unluckily hit the post with a tremendous shot, was lucky on this occasion. His thunderous slap shot thudded against the pad of goaltender Ben Clements, but continued in a forward direction (or backward direction from Clements’ perspective) and over the line. The goal made the Bison backers as happy as Augustus Gloop when he found a golden ticket in his bar of Willy Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight.

The final period proved to be a one sided affair with the Chieftains tiring. They managed only 4 shots on goal, whereas Bison tested Clements on 16 occasions and with another 2 shots (from Greener and Connolly) ringing the goal frame. Could Bison kill off their opponents? Could they deliver a decisive blow equivalent to a Kendo Nagasaki kamikaze crash? The game began to unravel for the Chieftains in the 45th minute. First of all Martin Piecha was done for interference. The dictionary defines “interference” as “a jumbling of radio signals, caused by the reception of undesired ones” That’s not what we saw/heard. What we saw was nothing to do with radios, but was, nevertheless, very much undesired. The whistle blew and Piecha had his liberty interfered with for 2 minutes.

Defending the power play, the Chieftains had to keep their discipline and keep it tight. To concede a goal now would have been a cataclysmic catastrophe of a capacious classification, causing criticism and contempt to congest the corporate consciousness of the Chieftains’ cognates, whereas in the Bison blocks it would have created a coincidental condition of considerable contentment and cued a cacophony of conviviality carousal in character. Alas for the visitors, they did not keep their discipline, cool, composure or noses clean. The 5 on 4 became a 5 on 3 when John Connolly was called for cross checking. The Chieftains held out until there were only 12 seconds left on the 5 on 3, but were unfortunately undone by the powerful shooting of Long Ciaron once again. Set up by Greener and Rand, he rammed home the puck via a vicious slap shot displaying the accuracy of a full length of the table black ball pot by Jimmy White (the snooker player that is, not the Great Train robber of the same name, although he may been a good snooker player himself – I don’t know). Netman Clements was beaten for sheer pace. Now 4-1 Bison and, although there was plenty of time remaining, the Chieftains looked as deflated as a tyre with a slow puncture and unlikely to come back. And indeed they did not.

A very strange incident occurred on 52 minutes. Grant Rounding was cross checked by Martin Piecha and knocked to the ice. He was then subject to a continuance of the assault by the cheeky Chieftains’ Czech chappie. In steamed Rick “The Beard” Skene, delivered a Mick McManus style forearm smash to Piecha’s chest and enunciated his considered opinion on the assault on his team mate to Piecha. In stepped the officials and doled out a 2 roughing to Rounding, who didn’t seem to have done anything other than be put upon, and merely a 2 cross checking to Piecha with nothing for his continued assault on a prostrate Rounding and nothing at all to Skene. Hmmm.

That was the last piece of exciting action in the game, which ended with the traditional “Great Escape” ringing from the rafters of Planet Ice. It had been a great escape for the Chieftains made possible by a good performance from their goaltender, Ben Clements, who stopped 38 of 42 shots directed at the Chieftains net not to mention being saved by the goal frame on several occasions. Needless to say he was elected Top Banana for his team. Aaron “Billy” Connolly picked up the award for Bison.