“Lucky” Goal and Shootout Winner – Discarded Harding Pokes Coach Nell in the Eye

Bison 3 Swindon Wildcats 2 (shoot out)

26/12/19

I had a dream about this game on Christmas night. Perhaps I had had too much wine and cheese. In the dream Red Leader, our favourite septuagenarian, took to the ice to play for Bison armed not with a stick but instead a set of concertina’ed up Venetian blinds. Needless to say his puck control was appalling. What would Freud have made of my dream. Maybe he would have had me committed. Well there are many who think I’m off my trolley. You will be pleased to hear that the dream didn’t come true, but the dreams of the Bison backers did as their team squeezed to a very stressful shoot out win over the Wildcats at the end of a purple pulsating encounter, which had hearts racing, palms sweating, hands trembling, lungs hyperventilating and Prozac bottles emptying.

The first goal of the game arrived on 16:31 and, as far as the Wildcats’ netman Renny Marr was concerned, it was a goal of unspeakable beastliness, so ghastly was the mode of its recession. It was a goal fashioned and scored by three characters who frequently appear together in jokes, namely an Englishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman. All we needed was the involvement of an Irishman, but alas none could be found. The Welshman was Adam Harding, who found himself behind the goal. He passed forward (or backward from a Cats perspective), looking for someone to dirtily stab the puck home, but before it could reach such an individual, the puck hit Marr and then rebounded behind him and trickled over the line as slowly as a bead of condensated water would dribble down the side of the glass containing your ice cold beer. The melancholic and indeed somewhat comedic outcome for Marr must have plunged him into a state of abject despondency, all cheeriness falling from his countenance and any glee, joy or bliss he may previously have been experiencing draining from his very being to leave his physical form a mere husk devoid of contentment. 1-0 Bison. Harding was credited as the scorer and his assistants were Ollie Stone and Liam “Square Sausage” Morris. Cymru am Byth. Time to break out the lavabread. (Eh? What be that? See footnote 1). The goal was later described by Cats’ coach Aaron Nell as “the luckiest goal you’ll ever see”. Oh really? Could Nell's comment be influenced by the fact that a player he got rid of came back to bite him on the bum? Surely not.

There was no further scoring in the period and Bison entered the break with a lead as thin as a Rizla fag paper. Having outshot the Cats by 15-5 they were worthy leaders, but as we know, a solitary goal lead can be overturned as quickly as it would take for the Howling Man to shout “Whitfield! Get your hair cut.” The Cats weren’t going to give up the ghost. The homesters needed another score to cement their position and were lucky enough to bag one on 25:23. But there was nothing lucky about the way it was scored. It had the crowd shouting Holy guacamole, flamin’ Nora and by all that is sacred. It was a goal of Ooo Matron purpleness executed with the ruthless precision of Mafia hit man Frankie Yale (Frankie who? See below and also footnote 2).

What happened? Read on and I will reveal all. A stretch pass out of the Bison D-zone from Coach Tait set Norris away. He burst between the 2 covering Cats’ D-men like a thoroughbred outpacing a couple of dray horses – yes it was Red Rum versus Hercules and his brother. (Who? Why Steptoe’s horse – see below).

Having worked himself into a one on one with Marr he proceeded to bamboozle the hapless netman and slide the puck through the Caledonian custodian’s 5-hole off his backhand. If Marr had been suffering from feelings of embarrassment, dejection and hopelessness after the first goal, his mood now plummeted into the swirling cess pool of despair. 2-0 Bison. Tait and Michal Klejna with assists for the goal.

The Cats had to get back into it as soon as they could and this they did on 31:39. Coach Nell sent Tyler Vankleef away behind the Bison net. His pass out front was met by a cracker of a clapper from another Tyler, namely Tyler Plews. In the split second it took to wonder whether either of the Tylers were named after Wat Tyler (Who? Come on I’ve mentioned him before – Wat Tyler was the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 of course), the biscuit flew from the Plews stick and struck Alex “Mittens” Mettam. Had the netman possessed a form similarly voluminous to that of Sue Tilley, subject of the famous Lucien Freud painting “Benefits supervisor asleep” (see below), he might have stopped the puck dead in its tracks. However he is of slighter build, even kitted up, than Big Sue, as she is known, and it was only a piece of the puck which he could get. Into the goal it went and it was 2-1 with all to play for.

P2 ended and, as they had at the end of P1, Bison were ahead, but only a solitary goal lead – an After 8 mint-esque width type of lead. The Cats came on strong determined to level things up and indeed go on to win the game. The Bison defense performed out of their skins and Mettam was once again the hero of the hour (well 20 minutes actually) with a number of stellar saves. The Cats found their way to goal blocked, their assaults beaten back, their efforts baffled and their moves barred – dashed hard cheddar to them. It was a veritable Bison Alamo. But alas Bison’s Alamo was to suffer the same fate as the real Alamo – you know the Davey Crockett one. With 1:23 remaining the signal was given and Marr raced from his net like crazy, at the double, post haste, pronto, chop-chop and PDQ and with the speed, velocity and pace of a man doing a runner from a restaurant without paying the bill. (I have never understood why anyone would want to do that – I mean a 500 yards sprint up the High Street full of curry? No thanks). This was no time to dilly-dally and dilly-dally he didn’t. On came skater no.6 and within 17 seconds, like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo in 1891 (he was a real person by the way), Coach Nell’s gamble had paid off. And it was Coach Nell himself who bagged the equalising score with an across the goaltender snipe into the top corner of the net. Vankleef and Chris Jones with the assists.

The dastardly pessimists amongst the Bison backers were now plunged themselves into a state of funereal perturbation. 3 of Bison’s last games at Planet Ice had ended in overtime losses. Why would it be any different tonight? Well there was no scoring in the extra period. The Cats’ best chance fell to Stevie Whitfield all on his own in front of goal, but he failed to get the better of Mettam, just as he has consistently failed to get his hair cut. Bison’s best chance fell to Klejna, who does have his hair cut, with a breakaway, but he shot wide. And so into the nail biting lottery of a penalty shoot out.

The first round of the shoot out was a cataclysmic disaster for Bison with Nell scoring past Mettam and then Klejna having his shot saved by Marr. Loris Taylor, another chap who I am sure the Howling Man thinks should get his hair cut, stepped up for Cats’ pen no.2. He failed to breach the Berlin Wall which is Mettam, so still 1-0 Cats. Cometh the hour cometh the man. Up stepped Sean Norris, not to be confused with Liam Morris who is someone completely different. He wasn’t afraid to grasp the nettle, grasp the opportunity and grasp the moment. He skated in and rifled in stick side past a startled Marr. 1-1 after 2 rounds. Next up was Vankleef, as deadly with the stick as his namesake Lee Van Kleef is with an 1851 Navy Colt (that’s him with one below). Alas for the Cats the High Noon encounter resulted in Mettam remaining un-gunned down. Eh? He saved the Vankleef shot. And so it befell Adam Harding to take the final shot (oh sorry I’ve given the game away using the word “final” – never mind). The Welshman skated forward intent on beating the Scotsman and putting one in the eye of Coach Nell who had got rid of him during the previous season. The Cats’ loss was Bison’s gain for sure. The Harding shot was an Ooo Matron effort whipped past the hapless Caledonian Madam Whiplash style. Bison win.

Dinosaurian celebrations burst from the Bison blocks. Fists were bumped, woo-hoos and yahoos were given vent to at decibellular volume, high fives were slapped, hats and babies were thrown into the air. Red Leader threw his Venetian blinds skywards, the Bespectacled Youth grabbed Shouty Jesus in a loving embrace, the Man in the Charlestown Chiefs shirt kissed the Che Guevara impersonator (surely an outrage to public decency).

The final act of the evening was to elect the top bananas. Chris Jones, not to be confused with Adam Jones or indeed Miss Jones, won the award for the Cats. Who else but Sean Norris could have won the Bison award – and yes he did. The Cats went away licking their wounds – 3 straight defeats which reinforced the Telford Tigers position at the top of the pile. As for Bison. Well mid table mediocrity at the moment but the Bison backers would settle for that – it was a win!

Footnote 1 : Laverbread is a Welsh delicacy made from seaweed found clinging to exposed rock on the west coast of Wales. It is nothing to do with bread.

Footnote 2 : Frankie Yale was a New York gangster, who acted as a hit man for Al Capone and is reputed to have got rid of Big Jim Colosimo and Dion O’Bannion for Capone. When he himself was rubbed out in 1928 after a high speed car chase, it was the first time a submachine gun had been used in a New York hit. A great distinction of which I am sure he would have been very proud.