Klejna Brings Bison Back from the Brink

Bison 4 Romford Raiders 2

12/10/19

Julius Caesar, the Roman geezer, once said of Ancient Britain “Veni, Vidi, Vici” – I came, I saw, I conquered. Since the beginning of season 2017-8, the Raiders have journeyed to Planet Ice, Basingstoke on 7 previous occasions intending to elevate themselves onto the pedestal of  victor ludorum. Alas on each occasion they have sustained an ignominious defeat. They have come and seen, but not conquered. Could they finally break that sequence and bag the laurels tonight? Well actually no. They fell short of Caesar’s achievement. It was to be defeat no 8 - an outcome most chunderous for them. However, at 2-0 up as P2 wound down, it was looking good for the Essex men. Fo-shizzle. But fate was to vomit on the Raiders’ hopes as they did exactly what Bonnie Tyler did in “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in that they fell apart in P3 and had to return to Romford with no laurels at all.

P1 opened and later closed. There were no goals. I shall say nothing more than that.

P2 opened and on 22:48 the visitors bagged a delayed penalty goal. Don’t ask me to describe it as I wasn’t looking and don’t care, but I can tell you that the scorer was Blahoslav Novak assisted by Sean Berry. Added to the list of things that don’t work at Planet Ice must now be the goal light at the bar end. As the puck slid over the line, the arm of Honest Pete, the goal judge, went up. Was he indicating a goal or asking to be excused? 1-0 Raiders.

Bison pressed forward in search of a levelling score, but such proved as elusive as a pot of leprechaun’s gold at the end of a rainbow. And indeed it would be the visitors who would bag another to surge further ahead in the contest. This one was scored by Oliver Alfie C. Baldock (that is how he is listed in the official EIHA records). Jake Sylvester’s shot was saved by Alex “Mittens” Mettam, but, much to his chagrin, the puck squirted to the aforementioned Baldock, who put it past the despairing Bison custodian. Dan Scott with the second assist. 2-0 Raiders.

On seeing their team surge into what they thought was an unassailable lead, the Raiders’ fans were moved to shout, “I say. Jolly good show. You’ve bally well had your chips, you Bison chappies.” Or at least something similar in Essex lingo. And so it appeared. The Man in the Charlestown Chiefs shirt, being a dastardly pessimist was now plunged into a swirling and indeed steaming quagmire of festering defeatism. “Bison won’t win it now,” he said to the Che Guevara impersonator, but what he knows about hockey can be written on the back of a postage stamp with a broad nibbed pen and he was once again proved to possess erroneous judgement and be as wide of the mark with his assessment as a bullet fired from a gun by Ray Charles at a target the size of a dinner plate at 1,000 yards.

Enter Michal Klejna. Every week in my youth I would read with great relish of the deeds of Captain Hurricane in the Valiant comic. Something would happen which would drive the Captain into an apoplectic rage. He would then charge forward, dodging machine gun bullets, and give the Germans what for with his bare hands, as can be seen in the illustration below :

Well, Klejna had a Captain Hurricane moment. He was so annoyed at the concession of the second goal that he threw his stick to the floor. He came onto the ice for a shift. The puck was fed through to him by Coach Ashley Tait. As if he was rushing forward to bang the heads of two German soldiers together, Klejna charged forward in a most Captain Hurricane-esque fashion and shot the puck. Michael Gray in the Raiders’ net was equal to it and saved, but Klejna picked up the rebounded puck and wrapped around before Gray could cover his back post. The goaltender had left a gap between himself and the post, almost as wide as the gap between Terry Thomas’s front teeth. Through that gap the very angry Klejna slid the puck. 1-2 Raiders. There had been only 19 seconds between the goals. Bison now had a straw to clutch at, a dim light at the end of the tunnel to observe, a peg on which to hang their hat, a ray of sunshine to bask in. Could they go on and win the game? Of course they could, as I shall relate dear reader. Suffice it to say that Klejna's goal was the crucial turning point in the game. Had Bison gone in 0-2 to the bad, it may have been a very different outcome.

P2 closed very soon after. P3 opened and it was to prove an utterly dominant period for the homesters, outshooting their opponents by 18-7, scoring 3 unanswered goals, all on the power play, and inducing the Raiders’ to concede 24 PIMs. Things turned from Ooo Betty to Ooo Matron for Bison and in the opposite direction for the Raiders.

On 41:07 up went Referee Matthews’s hands with 6 fingers projecting (actually 4 fingers and 2 thumbs but let’s not split hairs). Too many men on the ice. Off to the house of correction went the Raiders’ bench. Well not the actual bench. Now that would have been an interesting sight to see. On 42:48 Alex Sampford slewed a pass to Adam Jones. “On no not Jonesy,” said the Man with 3 Ear-rings, lamenting the time it frequently takes the D-man to get a shot away. Not on this occasion, however. Jones sent an Ooo Mr. Rigsby wrist shot towards the Raiders’ net and there was Ryan Sutton thrusting his lumber into the path of the puck, causing it to adopt an altered trajectory. Gray was beaten. Have you ever cooked Borsch, that famous eastern European dish? Take a kilo of beetroot, half a kilo of carrots, a stick of celery, 8 shallots and a clove of garlic. Peel and roughly chop the vegetables. Place in a large pan with a bay leaf and 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds. Cover with stock. Bring to a rapid boil. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to a simmer. Suppose you forgot the last bit. The pan would overheat and bubble over. That’s exactly what happened in the Bison blocks when the goal was scored. There was much bubbling over. 2-2.

Bison now had the momentum and on 45:45 Brandon Ayliffe was adjudged guilty of a J.R Hartley-esque hook on George “Gordon” Norcliffe. (J.R. who? See footnote 1). Into the slammer went the errant fellow. It was a heavy price he paid as only 17 seconds later it was 3-2. Adam Harding set up Tom “Wreck-It” Ralph for a shot from just inside the blue line. Wreck-It was about to wreck Gray’s evening good and proper. He delivered a wrist shot. The hapless unsighted custodian remained as motionless as a Norwegian Blue parrot nailed to his perch. (Those under 40 may have to Youtube the Monty Python “Dead Parrot” sketch). The puck sailed past his head and into the stringbag. Up went Honest Pete’s arm – he still hadn’t been excused. 3-2 Bison.

Things were looking rosy in the garden for the homesters and the bell was tolling for the visitors. The Raiders had their backs to the wall and they needed to pull a rabbit out of the hat to swing the pendulum back the other way. But Bison had no intention of giving quarter and turned the screw even further. The Raiders’ discipline was beginning to crumble and on 48:03 whilst 4 on 4 with Bison’s Bayley Harewood and the Raiders’ Ross Connolly already banged up, they once again fell foul of the law. Dan Scott was sent “up the river”, not to a place they call Sing Sing (where? See footnote 2), but instead to the glass house for roughing. It was to prove an erroneous action and folly of the highest magnitude as Bison took full advantage and hammered what proved to be the final nail into the coffin of the Raiders’ hopes, soon to be pushing up the daisies good and proper. Before the liberation of any of the aforementioned miscreants Harewood, Connolly and Scott it was 4 on 3. On 49:27 the puck was passed by Klejna once more to “Oh no not Jonesey” just inside the blue line. The brains of the Raiders’ 3, although presumably present, were clearly not engaged on the matter in hand, as their poor positioning and lack of awareness of the danger clearly illustrated disconbobulation in the thought process department. Rather than close Jones down they allowed him to move forwards as free as a bird, unchecked and uninterfered with. He had all the time in the world to pick his spot. An Ooo Mr. Rigsby wrist shot flew high into the net past a despairing Gray to complete his grey day (well evening actually). 4-2 Bison. Honest Pete’s arm was up again, but alas his long overdue visit to the establishment’s facilities remained unallowed.

But the game nor Honest Pete’s discomfort was not over. Oh no matron. We were to witness a scene of a life threatening variety as Callum Wells did his best to knock Bayley Harewood’s block off with a clothesline challenge when Harewood was in full flight. Blistering biriyanis! The young Bison forward was lucky to escape with his head still on his shoulders. Josh Kelly flew in like a super hero, but Wells saw him coming and he bounced off him in a somewhat comical manner which belied the severity of the incident. The two then came together in a potentially pugilistic manner, but the officials stepped in and prevented an escalation of this most disharmonious affray. The blood lust of the Bison crowd remained unfulfilled and the crowd became ugly. The Howling Man enunciated his views in an incomprehensible tirade. I concede that, as we were not able to make out any of the Howling Man’s words, the content of his haranguing diatribe must remain a matter of speculation. He was clearly very angry and rightly so, as his bald patch turned from pink to dark cerise, a litmus paper type indication of his degree of vexation. This was surely a game penalty for Wells. But no – only a 2 + 10.

The clock wound down and with 2 minutes remaining and with a 2 goal deficit to pull back it was cheerio, old fruit, as Gray was pulled from the Raiders’ net. Scoring an empty net goal is a bit more difficult that it looks as Bison had  4 or 5 attempts to do that very thing, but that aspiration remained unachieved. Suddenly the fat lady was singing and it was “all over now, baby blue”, as Bob Dylan once told us. So it was veni and vidi for the Raiders but no vici.

Top bananas were elected. The top Raider was considered to be the aforementioned Oliver Alfie C. Baldock, whose surname offers a myriad of plays on words (don’t worry I won’t), whilst Alex “Mittens” Mettam took the Bison accolade.

Footnote 1 : J.R. Hartley was a fictional character in a 1983 television advert for Yellow Pages. (Yellow what? Oh no don’t). Desperately going from shop to shop looking for his own out of print book “Fly Fishing”, he eventually finds a copy courtesy of Yellow Pages. OK it was long before the days of the internet, you young ‘uns. That’s how we found things in those days.

Footnote 2 : Convicts from New York City would be sent up the Hudson River by boat to Sing Sing prison in upstate New York hence the colloquialism “up the river”. Come on I’ve told you that before.