Bison Win the Title – Nearly

Bison Win the Title – Nearly

Bison 10 Invicta Dynamos 1

10/3/18

Blistering biriyanis! By Jingo! Holy guacamole! And whatever other exclamation you might care to rent the air with. What a game. Not the title decider, but the turnaround in goal difference from -6 compared to the Phantoms to +1 by the end of the evening makes a Bison championship winning season seem likely. Let’s not tempt fate by saying it’s a foregone conclusion, but all that is now required is a win in Cardiff tonight against the losingest (is that a real word? It might be in America) team in the league. And the key to all that was an Aaron “Billy” Connolly goal 2 minutes from time last Sunday to bring the score from Phantoms 3 Bison 1 to 3-2 and equal the head-to head between the teams. That meant that the title would now be decided on goal difference and, after last night’s goal extravaganza at Planet Ice, Bison are now ahead of the Potty icemen. If you need any further clarification just ask. I’ve got O-level maths you know.

It took Bison 14 minutes to break the deadlock. It was an extraordinary effort from Aaron “Billy” Connolly as he twisted and turned through the Kentish D like a slippery eel slipping through the hands of a trawlerman. No-one was able to dispossess him. Eventually he found himself in front of the net and he beat netman Euan King in the Mos’ net low catcher side. Assistants were declared to be the Antonov twins and Josh Smith. 1-0 Bison.

Bison had to be patient and carry on playing the way they were without getting frustrated as would be a burglar on an uninhabited desert island. Goals would surely come. And they did. Or at least one did. That was on 17:35. The Antonov twins fired a shot netwardsly and there was Desperate Dan Davies thrusting his lumber into the path of the puck to redirect it past a startled King. Second assist was given to Ryan Sutton. 2-0 Bison.

And so the period drew to a close with a 2-0 scoreline. P2 opened and what we were to see was a goalfest of Jumping-Jehosophat-on-a-pogo-stick proportions as Bison piled on the agony. Within just over 5 minutes of the start of P2 the score had gone from 2-0 to 6-0, causing the fingers of the scoreboard operator and the goal judge to move into overdrive and be in danger of Repetitive Strain Injury. We saw only 24 seconds of P2 play before it was 3-0. Once again Connolly found the net (strange expression that – the net is easy to find as it’s obviously behind the net minder – Ok it might be in front of him if he’s round the back harvesting a dumped puck, although it could be still behind him in this area if his back if turned to it, but let’s not split hairs). Set up by Smith and Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird, Billy whipped in a wrist shot from wide to the goaltender’s left. As the net bulged an explosion of merriment blasted forth from the Bison blocks as those assembled therein expressed their approbation of the goal. 3-0 Bison.

In 1962 Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin escaped from Alcatraz. They disappeared without a trace and were never seen again. On 21:30 the Mos’ D did a similar thing – they disappeared without a trace, but there the similarity ends as they were seen again later. Ryan Sutton or Elliott Dewey (I am not sure which – they both got assists) speared an inch perfect diagonal pass to the back door and there was Davies without a D-man within a country mile of him. He cracked the puck home through the King 5-hole. 4-0 Bison with more to come very soon.

On 23:16 the flat netwardsly pointing hand of Referee Boardman made a reappearance. What caused that? Set up by Stuart “The Cat” Mogg, Davies provided a pass for Sutton to skate onto and whip a characteristic wrist shot past a by now despairing netman King. The puck crashed into the roof of the net causing serious injury to the goaltender’s water bottle. Water , if not blood, had been spilled. 5-0 Bison.

By now the hapless netman must have been sinking into a state of funereal perturbation, not because of his water bottle, but because his save percentage was becoming increasingly chunderous and depressingly decreasing by the minute. More embarrassment was on its way as Bison ratchetted up the score, causing the aforementioned save percentage to sink lower into the depths of Ooo Betty hopelessness until it reached a rock bottom 80.49% by the end of the period, causing Coach Parrish to drag the dejected netman kicking and screaming from the net, to be replaced by his back up, who was to perform much better, but I jump ahead.

Davies completed his hat-trick on 25:29 with a tip in from a Karpov shot (6-0 Bison) and then on 24:34 there occurred something as unexpected as finding a Godfather-esque severed horse’s head in your bed. (Have you ever wondered how Don Corleone’s enforcers put it there without waking the guy up?). The Mos scored. It was a slick passing move with the gritty Mason Webster providing the ammunition for Steve Osman to fire in low. (Note Steve Osman mustn’t be confused with Donny Osmond or indeed Marie Osmond, who are personages completely different). 6-1 Bison.

Could the goal galvanise the visitors to scale up to an unprecedented level of excellence in their performance and stage an unlikely comeback from a seemingly hopeless position 5 goals to the bad? If they could it would be a miracle as astounding as the parting of the Red Sea. They needed Moses, but they didn’t have him and no metaphorical waters were to be parted. Soon after the Antonov twins restored the 6 goal margin with a snap home from in front of the net, receiving a pass from behind the goal line from Roman Malinik. 7-1 Bison.

Then on 33:08 Reynolds received a pass from the Antonov twins to his position just inside the blue line. The hairdresser’s stick cracked down on the ice just behind the puck, flexed and restraightened whilst making contact with the puck (OK I couldn’t actually see that from Block C) and sending it past goaltender King for his final humiliation of the night. It was an event which must have plunged him into a swilling quagmire of dispiriting victimhood. 8-1 Bison.

Those of a certain age may remember the Trumpton Firemen, namely Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb. That's them below. Have you ever lain awake at night, tossing and turning, bathed in perspiration, whilst anxiously wrestling with the puzzling enigma of why Barney McGrew is the only one with two names? No I haven’t either. That’s all by the by. What’s the connection with this game? Well for the third period the Mos changed their netman and brought on a relative of Trumpton fireman Dibble, namely John Dibble, to see if he could slow Bison’s progress. This is precisely what he did, albeit with a slice of luck as Bison rang his pipes 3 times in the opening minutes including twice in 2 shots. Dibble departed at the end of P3 having let in 2 goals in 22 shots, whilst the hapless King could boast, although I doubt whether he would do that, 8 goal concessions in 41 shots.

Allow me to relate the first breaching of the Dibble defense 16:55 into the period when it was looking like Bison would not be adding to their tally. Neat passing between Davies and Hallum Wilson found Karpov close in. The Czech chap’s finish was composed and cool, calm and canny, considered and calculated. The puck flew into the net causing Dibble considerable anguish of a type from which the deposed King was already suffering. 9-1 Bison.

Could Bison go on to record a double figure score? News was coming through of an astonishing comeback by the Streatham Redhawks from 0-4 to 4-4 at the Peterborough Phantoms, Bison’s title rivals, causing the Bison crowd to break into a chant of “LET’S GO REDHAWKS LET’S GO – clap clap - LET’S GO REDHAWKS LET’S GO – clap clap” at a decibelular level which threatened to bring down the building by jingo, by George and by jiminy. Well in answer to the rhetorical question at the beginning of this paragraph yes they could and did, although that 10^th goal came with only 1.7 seconds left on the clock. Reynold and Davies set up Karpov to do exactly what he had done on 56:55 – pop the puck past a funereally anguished Dibble, whose save percentage spiralled from 95.2% to 90.9% in the blink of the Czech chap’s eye.

Needless to say there were no more goals in the period and the buzzer sounded at 0:00 on the clock to bring on scenes of joy and merriment. In fact you could say (and I will) that a Vesuvius style volcanic eruption burst from the stands. They whooped. They hollered. They woo-hoo’ed. They screamed war cries and banshee wails. They chanted “BISON – clap clap clap BISON clap clap clap” until their hands were bleeding and their throats in need of Strepsils. The title was not won, but with the news of a 6-4 Phantoms win meaning that Bison must tonight beat a Cardiff team with a chunderous record of having lost every game this season by any score to be crowned champines. The Phantoms bolt is shot. Oh yes I nearly forgot to say – Top Bananas were the Mos’ gritty Mason Webster, who had put in a grittily gritty performance but not gritty enough to be the grit in the Bison Vaseline, and Desperate Dan Davies with a 3+3 night for the Bison.