Night of the Netmen

Bison 2 Leeds Chiefs 0

22/2/20

If you look back in history you will find a veritable cornucopia of incredible achievements by man. In 1909 Louis Blériot became the first man to fly across the English Channel......

..... in 1953 Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first men to conquer Mount Everest......

..... in 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.

 

The monumental task, with which I am faced, is how to write 1,500 words on a game with only two goals. I will have a go, dear reader, but I will almost certainly slide into the bubbling cesspool of failure and I hope I will be forgiven.

The visitors to Planet Ice last night were the Leeds Chiefs in their very first season. They languish at the bottom of the league, lower even than the Bracknell Bees, which is an achievement in itself, albeit an unwanted one, knowing how bad the Bees are (see previous reports to enjoy the veritable smorgasbord of trousers down spankings which Bison have doled out to their bumbling rivals). The Chiefs have only 11 wins from 40 games (now 41), but they are an embryonic outfit and I am sure we will see a vastly improved team next season, which cannot be said about the Bees, especially if they can hang on to their star man from last night’s game, namely goaltender Sam Gospel, who faced 40 shots and allowed (strange use of wording that – I mean it sounds so polite) only 2. Bison backers will remember that the Chiefs achieved a double header win when last at the Basingstoke Arena. Were they going to make it 3 out of 3? Well actually no they didn’t, as you will have gathered already from reading the score at the beginning of this report.

P1 opened and it was all Bison from start to finish. 14 shots were rained in on Gospel whereas at the other end, Alex “Mittens” Mettam was tested on only 2 occasions. Despite the bombardment of the Leeds net, the period produced only a single goal. This was scored on 13:33. Coach Tait away to the goal tender’s right found Sean “Eminem” Norris behind the goal line. Was the coach going to let the grass grow under his feet? Well, grass growing though the icepad is one thing we haven’t yet seen at our crumbling rink, but it could happen. The long-in-the-tooth coach cast aside any thoughts of what the ravages of time may have done to his creaking and indeed enfeebled 44 year old limbs. Indeed no, Matron. Coach Tait wasn’t going to let the grass, or anything else for that matter, grow under his feet. On his part there was no unconditional surrender, no slide into the quagmire of defeatism, no meek acceptance of the decrepitisation (OK that’s not a real word) of his crumbling form. He threw aside his Zimmer frame and advanced through the secondary crease. (If you are unaware of what the secondary crease is, ask the Bespectacled Youth – he’s researched it you know). Norris fired a lay it on a plate pass from behind the goal line into the path of the advancing geriatric. Perhaps Tait should have phoned the Police to report the Leeds’ D as missing persons, but he had no time. He smacked the puck home past a startled Gospel for his 20^th goal of the season. If there were any members of the aristocracy present (unlikely) they may have described the goal as spiffing, spanking, top drawer, wizard or capital. What ho? To the rest of us it was just a bloody good goal. 1-0 Bison. By the way anyone who has seen Ashley Tait play will know that above description of him is load of unadulterated claptrap, but hey! you don’t read these reports expecting accuracy do you? Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

P1 ended with no further scoring, so into P2 we passed. We were to see an improved Leeds performance, but not by much. Offensively yes, but defensively no. They managed to quadruple their tally of shots on the Mettam net from P1, 8 in total, but the Yorkshireman (yes he’s actually from Sheffield, but, as far as I am aware, does not possess a cloth cap or a whippet) proved equal to all of them. Was he going to achieve something beginning with S? No-one dared to utter that word. At the other end Bison fired 16 shots at a frequently hung out to dry Gospel. Never mind the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This was the Gospel according to Sam – the gospel of top notch goaltending as he stopped 15 of them. But alas for the beleaguered netman he was once again let down by chunderous defending. On 31:42 an attempted clearance out of defense met with a disaster, perhaps not as cataclysmic as the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 admittedly, but a calamity, a debacle and a catastrophe nevertheless. A Leeds D-man who I shall decline to identify, not to spare his blushes, but because I have no idea who he was, hoisted a clearance into the air. His heart must have sunk as a marauding Norris batted down the airborne puck, took control and skated across the goal, leaving the D-man for dead.....

Back in 1964 the Velvelettes released their classic Tamla Motown song “Needle in a Haystack”, in which they told us … 

“Findin' a good man, girls, is like findin' a

Needle in a haystack

What I say, girls?

Needle in a haystack

Shee-doop, wha-la, Shee-doop

Shee-doop wha-la”

Well Norris didn’t have a task half as difficult as finding a needle in haystack. All he had to do was find a team-mate to slam the puck into the net past the goaltender. However, facing the wrong way, he had to rely on telepathy and hope that one of his line mates had the fleet footedness and slippery eel-esque qualities to evade the Leeds D. His no look drop pass was indeed rewarded as there, charging forward with the speed of Kanazawa to Tokyo bullet train and displaying the enigmatic elusiveness of a jack-o'-lantern on a dark night, was Michal Klejna. The Slovak chap hammered home from the secondary crease, which is of course located in front of the primary crease (I’ve already told you to ask the bespectacled Youth about that). It was a Shee-doop, wha-la goal and by way of celebration a convulsive commotion characterised by a cacophony of caterwauling broke out in the Bison blocks. 2-0 Bison.

P2 ended without further scoring and a cumulative shot count of 30-10 in Bison’s favour. It had looked like plain sailing so far, but, as we know, 2 goals can be scored in the blink of an eye and the points were far from in the bag. But the Chiefs could not breach the defenses of Mettam in the final epoch and Gospel, who had played like the Berlin Wall in the first period and the gates of Fort Knox in the second, now displayed the impregnable qualities of the Iron Fortress of Rajsasthan (that's the gaff below) and shut out the Bison onslaught. The highlights of the period were Referee Brooks falling over, this evoking a cheer which reached a higher decibellular level than when Bison had scored, and Referee Jarvie picking up a discarded stick and skating along with it during active play as if to say, “Look here you Leeds chappies, I’m going to show you how to score a goal.” Thankfully he made no attempt to do so, as it transpired.

And so P3 ended with Bison very worthy winners by 2-0. Top bananas were appointed. Of course it was a netman’s night with Gospel and a save percentage of 95% carrying the day (evening) for the Chiefs and Mettam with the S-word which no-one dared to utter. Well done both of them.

P.S. OK only 1,330 words. Perhaps I should have taken on scaling Everest instead.