Strongarm Streatham Stumble and Stall

Bison 5 Streatham Redhawks 2 (Aggregate 10-4)

2^nd leg Southern playoff quarter finals

24/3/19

The Redhawks came to Planet Ice with a beat up Bison tactic looking to overturn a 2-5 deficit from the previous evening’s first leg. They failed, as I shall relate, dear reader.

The visitors knew they couldn’t pussyfoot around, tarry awhile, dilly-dally or dawdle. And indeed they did none of those things, but came out fast and went for the Bison jugular. Alas for them they could not turn early pressure into a goal. As the period wore, on it looked more likely that Bison would score. And indeed they did on 16:15. Don’t read here for a detailed description of the goal – it was a mess, a veritable blue paint scramble, a maniacal mêlée of gargantuan proportions. Eventually there was Dangling Dick Bordowski. He didn’t waste time dangling the puck. No indeed. He poked it over the line. A sonorous blast from Referee Pickett’s Acme Thunderer was heard and behind the goal Roxanne put on her red light, even though Sting told her she didn’t have to. It was a goal and Referee’s flat pointy hand confirmed that. 1-0 Bison. Doc Cowley with the solitary assist.

The Redhawks had no intention of throwing in the towel, even though they were 4 goals to the bad on aggregate. Perhaps they didn’t have a towel to throw in. The fat lady wasn’t singing yet and on 17:49, the visitors dragged themselves back into the tie with a goal. It was a set up from behind the goal line with Alex Roberts feeding Rupert Quiney, who really does need to get his hair cut, in the slot and unchallenged. He smacked in a one timer. 1-1.

The period ended and into the 2^nd epoch we passed. The Redhawks took only 4:37 to bag another goal. Ben Russell and Andreas Siagris combined to set up Thomas Soar, who made Bison heads sore as he shot through a crowd of players and in 1-2 Redhawks. Ooo Betty for Bison.

Never mind. Events were soon to occur that would burst the bounds of credulity and propel credence, with or without the Clearwater revival, to infinity and beyond. A team should never concede a short handed goal. It’s as bad as losing to a team of one armed men. To let in two on the same power play and within 10 seconds of each other – OK there may be inaccuracies in Hockeybloke reports (no I hear you say), but this double shortie thing actually happened. Let’s go back to 31:59. Alex Roberts thrust his stick into the ribs of Liam “Square Sausage” Morris. Rather than give him a Glasgow kiss, Morris grabbed the aforementioned twig and thrust it away in disdain. A shrill blast from the Pickett Acme Thunderer halted proceedings. 2 minutes to Roberts? No. Mister Magoo style myopia had set in. 2 minutes for holding the stick to Morris. Ok he did, but….

“Now’s our chance,” thought the Redhawks. “2-1 up – we could go 3-1 up on this PP and bring the tie back to a 1 goal affair”. As long ago as 1871, Edward Lear told us that the owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. (What was he on when he wrote that poem? Probably the same stuff that John Lennon was on when he sang about semolina pilchards climbing up the Eiffel Tower). Well there appeared to be a similarity between the antics of the owl and the pussycat and the Redhawks’ D. Although they didn’t have a pea green boat, the Redhawks did manage to be all at sea 1:05 into the 5 on 4. Doc Cowley cleared out of defense. Coach Tait gave chase and collected the puck without a challenge. I am not sure whether the defending on this occasion was more sinking ship than lead balloon. Suffice it to say it, like both of those, it went down, not down to the bottom of the sea nor down to earth, but down the pan, as Tait bypassed the solitary D-man who had bothered to track back, albeit in a somewhat lack lustre fashion, leaving his 4 colleagues up ice. Steaming in like the 9:15 to Waterloo was an unmolested Michal Klejna. He cracked the biscuit past a static Damien King in the net. Clouds of steam exited from the mask of the hapless goaltender who had been left cruelly exposed and with his trousers well and truly down by his inept D. 2-2.

 

“OK, that was a bit of a disaster, but we’ve still got nearly a minute on the PP to snatch back the lead.” If indeed these were the thoughts of Coach Cornish, he must have been driven to a state of advanced funereal perturbation, a maniacal, disillusioned and incredulous observer of the hideous scene which was about to unfold before his very eyes. Oh yes, dear reader, events turned into a ghastly nightmare 10 seconds of play later for the despairing coach. The Redhawks’ defending was once again a failure, a flop, a fiasco and a farce, not to mention mismanaged, mishandled, miscalculated and miscarried. Bison won the restart face off and Adam Harding from wide left slewed the biscuit to the same spot in the slot where Klejna had just cracked in his goal. It was not only déjà vu, but, even worse, déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once said. This time the solitary unchallenged Johnny-on-the-spot was Dangling Dick Bordowski. The Czech chap clappered the biscuit into the stringbag past a startled King. It was enough to make Edvard Munch scream and Coach Cornish to reach for his probably by now empty bottle of  Prozac. 3-2 Bison, for whom the last 10 seconds of play had propelled the Bison crowd to a state of Ooo Matron ecstasy. Chunderous, blunderous, blooperish and bunglesome are words which could be used to describe the Redhawks’ fouled up, loused up and screwed up efforts to gain an advantage from the power play. Their fans, every one of whom seemed to have a drum beating out that monotonous BOOM boom boom boom, BOOM boom boom boom, BOOM boom boom boom rhythm, must have been hurled headlong over the precipice and into the ravine of Ooo Betty doom, gloom and despondency.

That was it as far as scoring was concerned. P2 ended and the Redhawks found themselves with a 4 goal deficit to pull back in P3.

P3 opened and on 53:04 Danny Ingoldsby, scorer of 2 goals in the first leg, hammered a final nail into the blokes from the Smoke’s coffin. He seized on a misplaced pass and precipitated forward in a curry-in-a-hurry fashion before unleashing a cayenne pepper hot wrist shot. Blistering biriyanis! King may have stopped a stale samosa fired at him at pace, but he could not stop the puck. He was so taken by surprise that he failed to do anything other than just stand there, hoping that he was of sufficient size to block the goal completely. Alas not even any one of Fatty Foulke, Fatty Arbuckle (see below) and Giant Haystacks nor even all three of them standing side by side, could have done that and Ingoldsby’s shot flew from the tape of his twig with the speed of a javelin launched by Fatima Whitbread and through the hapless custodian into the net. Danny’s cheeks flushed with pride as he cellied with his linies. (He did what? He celebrated with his line mates of course. Don’t you know any hockey slang?)

 

So at 9-4 on aggregate things were looking a trifle undesirable for the blokes from the Smoke. Their chances of winning the tie (and I’m not talking about that piece of cloth which dangles from your neck and over which you spill you lunch) seemed as dead as Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury on October 26^th 1881. (Who? Come on – I’ve told you about them before. If you’ve forgotten, you’ll have to Google Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Coral). And so it proved. But Bison weren’t done yet and with 1:09 left in the game they bagged another to ensure that the Redhawks’ hopes were pushing up the daisies alongside Clanton and the McLaurys on Boot Hill. If you want to know how read on, dear reader.

Re-enter Dangling Dick with a piece of sorcery that would have rendered Gandalf, Dumledore and Tommy Cooper open mouthed with admiration. Receiving a pass from Jay King, the Czech chap collected the puck on the boards in the Bison half and precipitated forward. As Shakespeare might have said…. “that much admir’d fellow didst moveth f'rward with the elusivity of a slipp'ry eel.” Shakespeare was right. No-one seemed capable of dispossessing him or even stopping his forward motion. He slewed an inch perfect pass across the face of the goal to the stick tape of George “Gordon” Norcliffe, who clappered it home for a score of great spectacularity and one which would have delighted Shakespeare himself. 5-2 Bison and end of story, goodnight Vienna and Auf Weidersen Pet for the Redhawks.

However, before the proceedings were brought to a close an incident, which could hardly be described as a malodourous dispute of the most disreputable type resulting in virulent violence of the most disgraceful variety broke out. Josh Condren (don’t mis-spell his surname please) decided to teach Adam Harding a lesson. Off came the gloves and the two came together. Harding hit Condren once. The latter then collapsed to the ice like a sack of spuds, humiliatingly vanquished. Not much of a lesson really. And not much of a punch up either.  The blood lust of the Bison crowd remained unfulfilled.

A bizarre confrontation occurred after the final buzzer. Leigh Jamieson went over to the Bavy bunker and, reliable sources inform me, told Bavy, who had made one or two mildly provocative remarks (What? Who? Bavy?) in no uncertain terms that he should have some respect, jabbing his finger, Kevin Keegan “I’d love it if we beat them, love it” style (see below) to emphasise his point. Clearly Bavy misunderstood the situation and thought that Jamieson was making a music request, namely “Respect” by Aretha Franklin and by jabbing his finger towards the lap top, he was indicating where Bavy might find the soundfile. Never one to refuse a request (“Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Del-tones at the next game please Bavy) on came “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” which I am sure was enjoyed by all including Jamieson.

Top bananas were elected. Roberts was thought to be the best Redhawk and Morris took the Bison beers. The crowd drifted away. Next up the Phantoms in the semi-final. “We won’t beat them,” said the Man in the Charlestown Chiefs shirt, but what does he know about hockey? Even less than the Che Guevara impersonator I am told.

It's a Welsh Grand Slam for 2 goal Harding

Bison 3 Milton Keynes Thunder 0

16/3/19

The Milton Keynes Thunder visited Planet Ice for the final time this season, having been on the end of two trousers down spankings by 5-0 and 7-2 previously. Would they fare better on this occasion? Yes they would, thanks to a Colossus of Rhodes performance from their Basingstoke born netman, Jordan Lawday, who proved as impregnable as the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line, Hadrian’s wall and the vault doors at Fort Knox all rolled into one. Well almost. He stopped 45 of 48 attempts by Bison to breach his pipes including shut outs P1 and P3, but, alas for the visitors, not a P2 one. At the other end Dan “The Beast” Weller-Evans in the Bison net completed a rather quiet shut out night with only 14 saves to make. He would even have had time to take out a newspaper and read it, as he went for long periods without having to do anything, but hey a shutout is a shutout. Well done Dan.

As I have already mentioned P1 was scoreless, so I shall waste no ink in describing the proceedings and move straight on to the 2^nd epoch. Bison has been frustrated in the 1^st and their frustration continued in the 2^nd. 9 more minutes passed and still they had failed to find a way past the Thunder custodian. How were they going beat Lawday? Long range shots? Walking the puck around him? Smoke and mirrors? The latter seemed to be the only thing they hadn’t tried. As it turned out, ineptitude in defence proved to be the Thunder’s undoing as I shall relate in the following paragraph of this humble narrative, dear reader, so pray read on.

As the mid point of the game approached Thunder finally cracked like a quail’s egg hit with a pile driver. Coach Ashley Tait scrapped for the puck on the boards in a never capitulate, never say die, never give up, never surrender and never wave the white flag manner and came away with the biscuit. He slewed a cross ice pass to Alex Sampford in the slot. Lawday was well forward of his goal covering the middle and left hand side of the net. On December 16th 1985 Big Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family, was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in Lower Manhattan. Hit men lay in wait and the dietarily challenged crime boss (that’s the corpulent mobster below) was rubbed out in a hail of lead as he exited his car. Castellano had no bodyguard and the hit was a piece of cake. The moral of the story is be prepared. And that is exactly what the Thunder D weren’t on 29:58. Sampford fired to the all alone, unchallenged, unmolested, unseen Welshman Adam Harding at the back door. The goal gaped as wide as the Grand Canyon as he drove the puck into the net. Cymru am byth. 1-0 Bison.

Ok so only a goal down. Could Thunder carrying on where they’d left off on 29:57? They fared well for another 7 minutes, but their night was about to go from thunderous to chunderous in the space of 15 seconds starting on 37:16. Jay King danced forward and supplied a pass to Sampford, who in turn found Harding. There were a few players in the way, but Harding decided to have a shot. He snapped his wrists and the puck flew towards the Thunder net. Martin Luther King very famously had a dream. Lawday also had a dream. It was dream that he could keep Harding’s shot out. Such proved to be nothing more than a pipe dream as the puck flew past the hapless netman and into the net. 2 goals for Harding and 2-0 Bison.

Back in 1967 Otis Redding sat on the dock of the bay watchin’ the tide roll away and wastin’ time. In respect of the latter there was no similarity between Otis and Bison. They wasted no time in forcing re-employment on the thumb of the goal judge behind the Thunder net as they bagged a 3^rd 15 seconds of playing time later. Oscar Evans found himself in the slot with the puck at his feet, but being held from behind by a Thunder D-man in what appeared to be a loving embrace. Evans wiggled, wriggled and jiggled, but couldn’t free himself from the attention of his admirer and with his arms pinned to his sides the puck remained elusively in front of him. Suddenly Michal Klejna was on the scene. He may have said to Evans, “if you’re not going to do anything with it, I’d better”, but I heard no such utterance in far way Block C. The Slovak chap swept majestically past like a gazelle sprinting across the savanna, taking the puck with him. In 1953 Doris Day portrayed the legendary frontierswoman Calamity Jane in a musical of the same name (that’s her in the rôle bottom right). Many a young man lost his heart to the buckskin clad, six gun toting, sweet singing Day. The real Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Canary) shown below left, was, shall we say, less aesthetically pleasing. Had the Miss World contest been in existence at the time, she would not have been an entrant. She was by all accounts a tobacco chewing, beer swilling, foul mouthed woman who preferred to dress in men’s clothing. In terms of aesthetics the Klejna movement had the qualities of Doris Day, but the alas the Thunder defending was more Martha Jane Canary and Klejna remained free and unchallenged as he whipped a wrist shot past a cruelly exposed Lawday. Coach Tait was elected secondary confederate to the scorer. 3-0 Bison.

And so we moved into the final epoch of the regular season at the Basingstoke Arena. Prepare yourselves for a long question. Would it be a period of eye catching purple specalularity, which would thrill, dazzle and astound all present, resulting in jaws dropping open, tongues lolling out, eyes bulging and salivating and would there be utterances of “Blistering biriyanis”, “Good golly Miss Molly”, “Holy cow” and “By ‘eck, by gum and by all that is sacred” from the crowd as they revelled in Ooo matron hockey of the finest quality from the homesters? Well actually no. That’s not what happened. A rather flat final 20 minutes were played out without further scoring and Lawday’s save percentage for the game rose to a towering 93.75 as he stopped another 17 shots on his goal. At the other end a newspaperless Dan “The Beast” Weller-Evans, Bison’s other Welshman, had his shut out with 14 saves. Cymru am byth.

And so all that remained was for the the Top Bananas to be elected. Unsurprisingly Lawday was the Thunder star with 45 saves from 48 shots. Bavy gave a stirring speech far greater than Curchill’s “We'll fight them on the beaches” ditty and duly declared that the entire Bison team were the Top Bananas. No-one disagreed. What a season where a bunch of 3^rd liners no-one wanted, an untried coach, a captain dragged out of retirement and a pair of unknown imports thrown together at just a few weeks’ notice had performed such miracles. They had beaten every other team in the league home and away. Now for the play offs. Stay tuned.

Tait Seals Bees’ Fate

Bison 4 Bracknell Bees 3 (shoot out)

9/3/19

Enough has been said about the Bison to Bees summer defections, so I will not revisit that in case, dear reader, you gain the impression that I am a twisted, gloating, inflammatory trouble maker. Suffice it to say we saw a cracking encounter at Planet Ice last night and one which resulted in a penalty shoot out win for the good guys (sorry musn’t make subjective comments) and bring the head to head to 4-1 in Bison’s favour, so far this season. How on earth could that happen? Well read on and you will find out.

P1 opened. On 8:02 an innocuous challenge by Tom “Wreck-it” Ralph was interpreted as a crime most unspeakable, iniquitous and abhorrent not to mention nefarious, abominable and villainous by Referee Matthews, who felt Ralph’s collar for boarding. 2 + 10 became 2 + 10 + 10 as Ralph gave air to his contrary opinion in the most vociferous manner and a misconduct and, as a consequence, game penalty was slapped upon him. Already lacking the services of 2 D-men with Cooke and Dewey absent from the bench, Bison now found themselves in a chunderous situation with Ralph’s exit leaving them with only 3 regular blueliners. It was as undesirable as the scrapings from a Equatorial fish gutter’s chopping block at the end of the hottest day of the year. (I was going to post a picture of that, but this is a family read and I didn't want to have children running screaming from their computer screens). To make matters worse Adam Jones was called for a cross check a minute later and Bison had a 5 on 3 to defend. They didn’t.

There would surely be an offside call as the Bees moved into the Bison defensive zone. But no. Not only Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles but also Blind Boy Fuller (who? see footnote) would have spotted that one. But not Mr. Cook. Shaun “The Sheep” Thompson found an all alone Josh Smith wide to the right of the Bison goal. He skated in, drew Alex “Mittens” Mettam down and slid the puck across the line at the back post. The Bison crowd were outraged. Their blood boiled just as surely as the jolly swagman’s billy boiled by the billabong. It was an outrageous lino-ing error. The goal stood. Thompson and Aidan Doughty was awarded assists. 0-1 Bees. Incidentally did you know Stevie Wonder’s real name is Steveland Judkins?

  

There was no further scoring in the 1^st, which ended 20 minutes of play after the initial puck drop – well why wouldn’t it? It had been a chunderous period for the homesters. Outplayed and outshot by the Bees by 13-6, things had to improve in the 2^nd or it would be curtains. Initially they didn’t, but then they did as I shall relate, dear reader.

The early part of the period saw a much improved Bison until 5:38 into it when the Bees scored. Oh bloody. The Bison defending was cringeworthy and cataclysmic cock-up of colossal classification, as the Bees broke up play, broke forward and broke the P2 deadlock with an unchallenged Josh Martin smacking in from in front of the net. Zach Milton and Stuart “The Cat” Mogg were awarded apples. That’s player slang for an assists you know - I wouldn’t want you to think that pink ladies were doled out to Milton and Moggie. 0-2 Bees and, had had Bonnie Tyler (real name Gaynor Hopkins by the way) been present and a Bison fan she would have started singing “It's a heartache. Nothing but a heartache.”

What had seemed an uphill struggle at 0-1 and outplayed at the end of 1^st now became a mountainous one. Could Bison stage a comeback from this chunderous position? Or would it be a Bay City Rollers-esque “Bye-bye, baby” scenario. That's them below - great fashion. What Bison badly needed was a goal to boost their confidence and give the Bees’ something to think about. Well, as it transpired, the Bay City Rollers were premature with their farewell and Bison scored not 1 or 2 but 3 goals before the period ended to snatch an unlikely lead and condemn the Bees to a P2 interval locker room roasting from Coach Sheppard.

Bison goal no.1 arrived on 32:01 with Tyler Vankleef (OK no more spaghetti western jokes) binned for a stick into the face of Alex Sampford, who, some observers said, shed blood as a result, but for reasons I cannot throw light upon, there was no match penalty for Vankleef, who would later score a goal and take 3 penalties in the shoot out when arguably he should not have been on the ice. Perish the thought that I should criticise the officials.

In the resultant 5 on 4, Bison bulged the net at last. Well only metaphorically speaking as it was a trickle across the line type of goal – a veritable dirty goal with a discordant and disorganised discombobulation in front of the crease. Netman Dean Skinns failed to make himself as impregnable as Hadrian’s wall and the puck trickled across the line, as I have already mentioned. The scorer was Michal Klejna and the apple recipients Ashley Tait and Adam Jones. 1-2 Bees.

That was all Bison needed. Imbued with a new confidence they hammered away at the visitors and were rewarded with an equalising score on 36:54. Adam Jones shot in a goalwards direction and there was Michal Klejna with a twig dangling redirect. Would Skinns manage to save it? He did, but, much to the netman’s chagrin, he proved to be a trifle rubberoid on this occasion and the puck bounced off him straight to Adam Harding, who slammed the biscuit into the net past Deano to render the hapless netman devoid of contentment. In the Bison blocks, some shouted “Holy cow!”, others “Holy mackerel!”, others still “Holy Guacamole!” 2-2.

But Bison were not finished yet and scored again only a minute later to make Coach Sheppard, just back from a 2 game suspension, wish it had been a 3 game suspension, which would have enabled him not to be there and witness this falling apart of his team and suffer a dagger blow to his heart as it was a player he didn’t want in the summer who scored the go ahead goal. That was Danny Ingoldsby. Taking a pass from Adam Jones he raced forward and fired in a wrist shot of great purpleness. 3-2 Bison. The Bison backers greeted the goal with vociferations illustrating their joy and enthusiasm. They whooped. They hollered. The yahoo’ed. They woo-hoo’d. They squealed like a pig. They screamed like a banshee. They brayed like a donkey. They howled like the Hound of the Baskerville. They war cried like Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

The concession of yet another goal and one scored by a player they didn’t want (OK that’s the second time I’ve mentioned that – just making a point) propelled the Bees and their accompanying admirers in a downward direction to a new level of wretchedness, as they wallowed in opprobrium. However, the “supporters of hockey”, who watch the Bees but declare they are not Bees’ fans, must have been delighted to see a Ooo matron goal of such purple spectacularity crown an astonishing turnaround. Indeed they must have been inwardly rejoicing to witness a volte-face of eye opening unanticipatedness (OK I made that word up) from left field. 0-2 to the bad and looking like they were going to be on the receiving end of a beating more violent than a housewife flagellating a doormat (see below), Bison were now ahead, having delivered a spanking of their own in the form of a 3 goal salvo. P2 ended and Bison went to the locker room, doubtless to receive the acclamation of Coaches Tait and Redmond. The scenes in the Bees’ locker room can only be imagined, but delight, elation and jubilance are not words which could be used to describe the scene I am sure.

P3 opened and, although Bison won the shot count by 9-3, it was the Bees who bagged the only goal of the epoch. The scorer was Vankleef – you know that fellow who maybe shouldn’t have been on the ice at all. He rifled in a top shelfer across Mettam from a tight angle and it was 3-3. Josh Martin and Thompson were declared assistants to the scorer.

Into overtime we passed and a typical cat and mouse 5 minutes ended at 2 shots apiece but no goals, thus necessitating a penalty shoot out. 1-1 at the end of 3 shots apiece led to sudden death, the 7^th penalty of which saw Vankleef firing towards an empty net or at least it would have been had the shaft of Mettam’s stick not been in the way. The puck ricocheted off the netman’s lumber and away to oblivion, leaving Coach Tait to score and win the game for Bison. Tait had scored the previous penalty with a deke and slide across the line past a beached Deano, but this time he chose to whip it in top shelf and the game was won.

Top Bananas were elected. Ed Knaggs was top Bee and Adam Jones took the Bison award with a 3 assists Ooo Mr. Rigsby game.

Footnote : Fulton Allen aka Blind Boy Fuller (that’s him below playing a National steel guitar – OK could be a Dobro) was an amazing blues guitarist and singer who made a large number of recordings in the 1930s including “Big leg woman gets my pay”, “Meat shakin’ woman” and “Bye bye baby blues” (so that’s where the Bay City Rollers stole that one). He died tragically young aged 32.