Essex Men Discover That The Only Way Is Bison

Bison 4 Chelmsford Chieftains 1

22/11/14

The Chelmsford Chieftains visited Planet Ice for the cup clash with Bison last night, having been overrun by 5-1 in the home fixture against the Basingstoke icemen in early September. Was it going to be a walkover? To draw an equestrian analogy, would Bison’s thoroughbred race horse run rings around the Chieftains’ Hercules (who? Steptoe’s carthorse of course). As it turned out, Bison playing at three quarter speed, with Vantroba, Sheppard, Wales, Selby and Reynolds all missing from the line up, easily overcame the Essex men, but only by 4-1. In a competition which has seen double figure scores notched up by EPL teams against their ENL counterparts, the Chieftains must have been satisfied with their respectable defeat. But they did have their moment of glory, as I shall relate.

That moment came on 8 minutes when the Chieftains snatched the lead with a goal which came out of the blue, out of left field and out of nowhere. What happened? Julian Smith delivered the perfect defense splitting pass for Ross Brears to skate onto. Brears couldn’t have skated forward any faster than if he had been pursued by a pack of rabid stoats. He wasn’t going to be caught. He executed a clever deke and slotted the puck over the line. It was 1-0 Chieftains. The Chieftains’ faithful, Essex men/women to a man/woman I am sure, vocalised their approval of the goal in estuary English. As for their Bison counterparts, it would not have been surprising if at least some of them had fallen to the floor in a dead faint from the shock of it all, but I noticed no-one doing such.

It wasn’t until the 16^th minute that Bison leveled the game up. Lumberjack Joe Rand fed Bison skipper Nicky Chinn who worked the puck out from behind the goal line to Aaron ”Billy” Connolly to smash home from in front of the net. It was 1-1 and the goal brought a feeling of relief to the Bison backers. Bison’s own Man of Steel hoisted a baby elephant over his head in celebration, Mystic Jo threw her tarot cards in the air and Oxobloke poured himself a celebratory cup of gravy from his flask.

There were no more goals in the period and it ended 1-1 with Bison clearly the dominant team, outshooting the Essex men by 18 to 7. Could they continue in the same vein in the next period? Well in actual fact they couldn’t and P2 was much flatter with the Chieftains almost matching Bison shot for shot. However, Bison finishing was much improved with a 2 goal return for 8 shots on the Chieftains’ net. The first came on 29 minutes and was a power play goal. Brandon Aycliffe was done for tripping and was invited to rest awhile. Alas for him, the rest lasted only 11 seconds. Bison besieged the Chieftains’ defensive zone, working the puck from side to side and around until Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird was presented with an opportunity of a slap shot from the point. He gave it all he had and Joe’s clapper hit the back of the net for 2-1 Bison with the goaltender beaten for sheer pace. Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov and Cuddly Joe Greener were awarded assists.

4 minutes later it was 3-1 Bison. Cuddly Joe Greener’s set up was quite superb. He picked up the puck on halfway wide left and cut a path forward and around the back of the net as easily as if he had been a buzz-saw wheel from Rufus Roughcut’s Buzz Wagon. He emerged at the back door, but delayed his pass. Eventually he saw the opportunity and found Long Ciaron Long in the slot with space for a shot. Long Ciaron, who subsequently unluckily hit the post with a tremendous shot, was lucky on this occasion. His thunderous slap shot thudded against the pad of goaltender Ben Clements, but continued in a forward direction (or backward direction from Clements’ perspective) and over the line. The goal made the Bison backers as happy as Augustus Gloop when he found a golden ticket in his bar of Willy Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight.

The final period proved to be a one sided affair with the Chieftains tiring. They managed only 4 shots on goal, whereas Bison tested Clements on 16 occasions and with another 2 shots (from Greener and Connolly) ringing the goal frame. Could Bison kill off their opponents? Could they deliver a decisive blow equivalent to a Kendo Nagasaki kamikaze crash? The game began to unravel for the Chieftains in the 45th minute. First of all Martin Piecha was done for interference. The dictionary defines “interference” as “a jumbling of radio signals, caused by the reception of undesired ones” That’s not what we saw/heard. What we saw was nothing to do with radios, but was, nevertheless, very much undesired. The whistle blew and Piecha had his liberty interfered with for 2 minutes.

Defending the power play, the Chieftains had to keep their discipline and keep it tight. To concede a goal now would have been a cataclysmic catastrophe of a capacious classification, causing criticism and contempt to congest the corporate consciousness of the Chieftains’ cognates, whereas in the Bison blocks it would have created a coincidental condition of considerable contentment and cued a cacophony of conviviality carousal in character. Alas for the visitors, they did not keep their discipline, cool, composure or noses clean. The 5 on 4 became a 5 on 3 when John Connolly was called for cross checking. The Chieftains held out until there were only 12 seconds left on the 5 on 3, but were unfortunately undone by the powerful shooting of Long Ciaron once again. Set up by Greener and Rand, he rammed home the puck via a vicious slap shot displaying the accuracy of a full length of the table black ball pot by Jimmy White (the snooker player that is, not the Great Train robber of the same name, although he may been a good snooker player himself – I don’t know). Netman Clements was beaten for sheer pace. Now 4-1 Bison and, although there was plenty of time remaining, the Chieftains looked as deflated as a tyre with a slow puncture and unlikely to come back. And indeed they did not.

A very strange incident occurred on 52 minutes. Grant Rounding was cross checked by Martin Piecha and knocked to the ice. He was then subject to a continuance of the assault by the cheeky Chieftains’ Czech chappie. In steamed Rick “The Beard” Skene, delivered a Mick McManus style forearm smash to Piecha’s chest and enunciated his considered opinion on the assault on his team mate to Piecha. In stepped the officials and doled out a 2 roughing to Rounding, who didn’t seem to have done anything other than be put upon, and merely a 2 cross checking to Piecha with nothing for his continued assault on a prostrate Rounding and nothing at all to Skene. Hmmm.

That was the last piece of exciting action in the game, which ended with the traditional “Great Escape” ringing from the rafters of Planet Ice. It had been a great escape for the Chieftains made possible by a good performance from their goaltender, Ben Clements, who stopped 38 of 42 shots directed at the Chieftains net not to mention being saved by the goal frame on several occasions. Needless to say he was elected Top Banana for his team. Aaron “Billy” Connolly picked up the award for Bison.

“Billy” Connolly and Mystic Jo Nail It

Bison 2 Swindon Wildcats 1

15/11/14

Aaron “Billy” Connolly grabbed a brace of goals, both set up by Lumberjack Joe Rand, to enable Bison to edge a game which they should have won easily against a Wildcats side, who were clearly having an off night. In the words of Baloo, Bison should have been “solid gone” long before the end. Never mind Billy’s brace, the real star of the night was Mystic Jo. After her near miss predictions in the last two games (see previous report), she changed her brand of tealeaves and got it bang on the nose (not literally thankfully). 2-1 she said and 2-1 it was.

The game started well for the Basingstoke icemen. With barely a minute and a half on the clock, they romped into the lead. The set up for the goal by Lumberjack Joe Rand was quite superb. He scrapped for the puck on the boards behind the goal and then set off on what looked like a wraparound attempt. Goaltender Stevie Lyle positioned himself hard up against his post to thwart the effort and must have been shocked to see instead Joe emerge in a wide sweeping arc and fire an across the crease pass to an unmarked Aaron “Billy” Connolly at the back door. It was too late for Lyle to get across and Billy slammed the puck home. Some shouted "GOAL!" Others "HURRAH!" The vicars present shouted "PRAISE THE LORD!" notwithstanding that it is unlikely that the Almighty had anything to do with the goal. But Lumberjack Joe and Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds had and they were both awarded assists.

Then came a goal that wasn’t a goal, but should have been. Had Referee Szucs been taught by my old physics teacher, “Ernie” Retter, he would have realised that Muzzy Wales’s effort in the 2^nd minute was legitimate. What happened? Well a thunderous shot hit the plexi and bounced back in front of the net where Muzzy hammered it home, as confirmed to me by the Beared Rabble Rouser of Block A, a close observer of the incident. Much to the chagrin of the Bison backers Mr. Szucs stood with arm splayed wide, as if impersonating the Angel of the North. He had seen the catch netting above the plexi move and thought that the puck had hit it after hitting the plexi. He declared the play dead. However, my teacher Mr. Retter would have told him that when a moving object hits a solid stationary object, only some of the kinetic energy is absorbed by the stationary object, but the remainder causes the moving object to bounce away from the stationary object in the opposite direction. A net is not a solid object and will absorb virtually all the energy, causing the puck to fall limply to the ice below. But plexi is solid (OK it’s slightly wobbly) and in this case the puck rebounded a full 6 or 7 metres back in the direction from whence it had come where it met Muzzy who smashed it in. Had Mr. Retter been present he would have shown nothing more than mild irritation (I never saw him angry) that Mr. Szucs clearly hadn’t paid attention in class. It mattered not a jot. “No goal and to hell with physics,” said the gent in the stripes and no goal it was or rather a goal it wasn’t.

Bison continued to press, but, despite outshooting the Cats by 14 to 4 in the period, could not increase their lead. The nearest they came was in the 14^th minute when Coach Sheppard became a boarder in the penalty box for boarding. Any fans of Minder and The Sweeney out there? Well Maple leaf Doug thought the call rather harsh and looked at the referee with a Terry McCann “LEAVE IT OUT, ARFUR!” look on his face and got a Jack Regan “SHUT IT!” look back from the ref. In the ensuing power play the Cats were suddenly caught with their trousers down and a 2 on 1 breakaway. Rand and Connolly bore down on the Cats’ net, but Rand’s option of a pass to Connolly at the back door was prevented by the covering D-man and he had to shoot himself (not with a gun of course). His shot was saved by Lyle. 1-0 it remained and 1-0 the period ended.

The Bison backers were hoping that their team would carry on in P2 from where they had left off in P1 and turn their dominance into goals, but things don’t always go the way one would expect and Bison instead found themselves pegged back to 1-1 within 3 minutes of the restart. Alas a defensive slip up by Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba, who proved slightly less than marvellous on this occasion, let in Jonas Hoog, who set up Tomasz Malasinski to score. It was robbery. Not of a type which a highwayman would perpetrate. I heard no-one demanding “Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.” Adam Ant might have, had he been present, but he was not, much to the chagrin of the Man with 3 Ear-rings, who holds the Adam and the Ants Appreciation Society membership card no.001. So not highway robbery, but certainly a hockey robbery.

The period played out with the Cats a lot better than they had been in P1 and, on their P2 performance, possible worthy of being on level terms if not in terms of play overall. That doesn’t really make sense does it? I know what I’m trying to say.

Into P3 we went and the game’s decider took 6 minutes to arrive. It was a power play goal. Shane Moore, who obviously doesn’t play bingo or he wouldn’t wear no. 88, hooked and had his liberty revoked. With only 18 seconds remaining on the power play Bison executed the decisive move. In 1897 H.G.Wells wrote a novel entitled “The Invisible Man” in which a young scientist named Griffin discovered the secret of invisibility, hence the title of the book …… surprisingly. For Griffin, read the Cats’ D. They also seemed to have discovered the secret of invisibility when a Lumberjack Joe Rand pass sent “Billy” Connolly clear of the D and barrelling in on goal. He didn’t mess about. He saw an expanse of net top right and found it with a rip snorter which beat Lyle for sheer pace. The goal was greeted by a hurling of hats to the rafters of Planet Ice – the sauerkraut salesmen from Hamburg their Homburgs, the canal tollmen from Panama their Panamas and the fishermen from the South West their Sou’westers. 2-1 Bison.

The Cats were being as outplayed as they had been in P1, but with it being just a one goal game and with players as dangerous as Hoog, Nell and Malasinski on the ice, there was always a chance that the visiting icemen could level it up once more or even chalk up a come from behind win. That was, alas for the Cats’ cognates, until Shane “Two Fat Ladies” Moore, blew it for his team. Right in front of the referee, he slammed his elbow into the face of Long Ciaron Long. PEEEEEEEEP!! The referee’s whistle blew. Or more correctly had been blown. A whistle can’t blow itself after all, so why do we say “the whistle blew”? A quirk of the English language, but let’s not split hairs. Mr Szucs had seen everything and, as Long Ciaron crumpled face first to the ice with blood gushing unrestrained (well dripping actually) from a facial wound, Moore must have known that he was in the mire good and proper. Had it been a case of beard envy, Long Ciaron’s cave man style beard being much more luxuriant than Moore’s facial effort? With only 4:11 remaining a 5 + match for the hapless D-man ensured that the Cats would be playing out the rest of the game short handed. A patched up Long Ciaron made it back onto the ice for a shift after the incident thus enabling the officials to reduce Moore’s match penalty to a game penalty – a fine example of sportsmanship from Bison and possibly not one which “Two Fat Ladies” Moore deserved such had been the violence of his assault on Long Ciaron. Had he done that in the street, he would have been looking at a stretch inside for GBH.

Bison nearly put the result beyond doubt with a minute left when a slap shot from the point was tipped onto the post by Billy Connolly (I think). With only 16 seconds remaining Grant Rounding was done for hooking. This gave the Cats the opportunity to turn it into a 5 on 4 as they pulled Lyle from the net. They could not take advantage, however, as Bison cleverly trapped the puck on the boards a couple of times, giving the Cats no opportunity for a strike at goal. The game ended with an empty net goal which wasn’t. Lumberjack Joe Rand’s lofted shot from the Bison half found its way into the net, but the referee ruled that the buzzer had gone before the puck had crossed the line, so it remained 2-1. Never mind it was game over and a narrow but well deserved win for Bison. And well done Mystic Jo. She said she wasn’t going to use PG Tips tea leaves anymore and has instead switched to Yorkshire Tea. After this, you can see why.

Last Ditch Defending Pulls BisonThrough

Bison 3 Milton Keynes Lightning 2

8/11/4

A fine double scoring performance from Blaz Emersic came close to completing a Lazarus style rise from the dead for Milton Keynes Lightning at Planet Ice last night. Trailing 3-0 at the end of the 2^nd and having been outplayed, MKL nearly pulled it off, but at the end of proceedings Lazarus’s feat remained unrepeated and, in contrast, they were as dead as the Monty Python parrot.

The first period was fought out in a competitive spirit and almost ended honours (or rather lack of them) even. It wasn’t until the clock ticked down to 1:07 remaining that the deadlock was broken. The scorer was Cuddly Joe Greener on the power play with a hooking Emersic serving time. Set up by Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov and Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba, Cuddly Joe rang the puck off the post with a shot from the slot. He followed in and bundled in the rebound. The goal light did not illuminate. The goal judge’s chair was empty. Had he gone off to buy a Pukka pie? It mattered not. Referee Szucs was happy it was a goal and he indicated such by pointing at the goal with a flat hand. 1-0 Bison. In Block O the visiting party of French onion men from Onnion (yes the place really exists) hurled their berets into the air and offered a sacrifice of their sacred vegetable to the hockey gods. OK they weren’t really there, but, had they been…..

Bison needed to step up as gear and this they did in P2. Outshooting MKL by 12-7, they piled on another couple of goals to finish the period a comfortable 3-0 ahead.

The first of their P2 goals on 26 minutes was a peach. In terms of artistic merit, it wasn’t just a can of paint thrown onto a blank canvas, hung in the Tate and declared to be a work of art. No it was a masterpiece of Rembrandt proportions. Michael “Muzzy” Wales worked the puck off the boards and passed inside to Grandmaster Karpov, whose pass on to Grant Rounding at the back door was so swift that goaltender Jordan Hedley couldn’t move quickly enough to close the gap. Had Dr. Bruce Banner been in goal, he could have become very angry and transformed himself into the Incredible Hulk and, in doing so, blocked the net completely, not to mention frighten the Bison forwards. However, the custodian of the pipes wasn’t Dr. Banner. It was the hapless Hedley and he proved incapable of morphing into the Incredible Hulk, nor any sort of hulk come to think of it. Rounding rounded off the move with a backhander across the line through gap between Hedley and post. 2-0 Bison.

In between the two P2 goals we were treated to a couple of bizarre decisions from the referee. Firstly Aaron “Billy” Connolly was in on goal, but received a nudge which knocked him into the goaltender. The decision was a 2 minute penalty for Billy for interference. Eh? Shortly afterwards Long Ciaron Long was high sticked in the face and shed blood. The call? Nothing at all. Eh? The Bison backers disagreed with the Connolly decision and then the Long non-decision, but not in a polite, placid or perfunctory manner. Pish no! Powerfully and pulsatingly passions poured from the peeved populous. Piercing and petulant were their pained protests. To no avail.

On 34 minutes, Bison stormed into a 3-0 lead with a finish from Grandmaster Karpov of the highest quality. The goal was created by Grant Rounding. It has to be said that the defending was humungously horrendous and hideously horrible. You couldn't say the Lightning D was blowing hot and cold, as no hot was involved. It was more a case of blowing cold and cold. They found themselves exposed in a 2 on 1, but still had a chance of breaking up the move. Rounding took possession of a loose puck in the neutral zone and powered forward over the red line. However, he knocked the puck too far and the covering D-man got his stick to it, but the latter seemed not to want the puck and gave it straight back. Rounding’s pass to Karpov on the left wing was met with a thunderous angled first timer which flew into the net over Hedley’s catcher before he could react. 3-0 Bison. The goal caused the Man with 3 Ear-rings to become so overjoyed he wanted to burst into song. He couldn’t make up his mind between “Funky Moped” and “Goody Two Shoes” and thankfully sang neither.

MKL were sinking without a trace. If they were to salvage anything from the game, they had to play a lot better than they had been in the first 2 periods. What we saw in P3 was a transformed visiting team. They pulled back 2 goals, both on the power play, and came within a Rizla fag paper’s width of levelling the game. Their first goal came on 42 minutes. With Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird called for high sticks and serving time. Bison were caught exposed. Blaz Emersic broke forward with shouts of “OFFSIDE” from the Bison backers ringing in his ears. It mattered not a jot as no call was made. Emersic barrelled in on goal and beat Dean “Deano” Skinns with a clever deke and backhand across the line. 3-1. Connor Goode and Leigh Jamieson were awarded assists.

Emersic’s and MKL’s second goal came with 6 minutes remaining. Long Ciaron Long was adjudged to have held a stick he was being hooked with. No call against MKL, but a 2 minute sentence of solitary for Long Ciaron. Eh? Bison looked to have killed the penalty, but, with 19 seconds remaining, an event occurred which meant they hadn’t. Michael Farn and Grant McPherson worked the puck to Emersic in the area between the slot and the point. He raised his stick high above his head. No need for Mystic Jo to hold a séance and call on the spirits from the other side to help her predict what was about to happen – it was bleedin’ obvious to all. He brought his stick down in a sweeping arc to hit the ice first then puck second within a split second. The puck lifted from the ice and flew like a rocket propelled missile over the screened goaltender’s shoulder and into the net. The noise from the visiting fans (all 20 of them) which greeted the goal was of avalanche-esque proportions or at least in relative terms. At 3-2 it was now a one goal game and 6 minutes to play. MKL hopes were high.

Bison needed to bag a 4^th to fulfil Mystic Jo’s prediction of 4-2 or shut the game down and snuff out the Lightning attacking threat. They failed to claim that goal, but they achieved the latter with defending as hard as a Pukka pie after 120 minutes in a brick kiln at 1,000°C. Typical of the resolute and determined last stand/bodies on the line style defending was, as you might expect, Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds. His twisting and turning style of skating to get out of hot situations, his puck control, his positional sense and his physical presence, not only in the final phase, but also throughout the game, made him a dead cert for Bison’s man of the match. Who got it? Tomas Karpov. Eh?

The clock ticked down, as Bison denied MKL the space to create more than a handful of opportunities. The buzzer sounded and Bison were victorious. Bad luck Mystic Jo. A 3-2 prediction last week with the game ending 4-2 and a 4-2 predication this week with the game ending 3-2. Like Eric Morcambe you’re playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.

Blow on the Head Fails to Knock Sense into Ref Matthews

Bison 4 Bracknell Bees 2

1/11/14

Bison eventually triumphed, with some difficulty it has to be said, over bottom of the table Bracknell on a night which saw some of the most bizarre officiating seen at Planet Ice since Methuselah was a boy. A series of strange decisions or lack of them left home and away fans and players alike open mouthed in astonishment. On one occasion in P3 Coach Sheppard was called for slashing, an offence that only Referee Matthews had seen and the other 1,000 in the rink not. Maple Leaf Doug looked as shocked as a Nazi storm trooper impaled on Lance Corporal Jones’s bayonet (not that any ever were). Then on another occasion an offside was called without the puck even coming close to passing over the blueline. The final poor call was allowing the second Bracknell goal rifled in through a crowd of pushing, shoving, cross checking, interfering and otherwise infringing players assembled as a jostling gaggle in the blue paint in front of the Bison net. However, in the final analysis, it mattered not a jot as Bison bagged the points to consolidate their league position and gain revenge over the Bees for an unfortunate defeat when last at the Hive when a shortie by Lukas Smital with 10 seconds remaining thrust a dagger into the hearts of the Bison faithful.

P1 saw a stuttering Bison failing to penetrate a resolute Bees D. Despite outshooting the Bees by 10 to 6 in the period, they could find no way through a resolute Bees D backstopped by an impressive Alex Mettam. In fact it was the Bees who snatched the lead on 11 minutes with a power play goal from the dagger thrusting Smital. They showed how to take advantage of a 5 on 4 with a goal only 9 seconds into Declan Balmer’s 2 minute tripping minor. Ivan Antonov and Radek Hubacek combined to set up Smital, who smashed the puck home through the crowd. 1-0 Bees.

Bison spent the rest of the period a-huffing and a-puffing, but were unable to blow the beehive down and by the end of P1 Bison were left as frustrated as a man with a hair piece needing to go out on a windy day, but freshly out of Evostick. It had been a disappointing period for the home team and, in true Monty Python style, they must have hoped that it was going to be a case of  “And now for something completely different” in P2. However, the Bees continued to frustrate and it turned out to be more a case of “And now for something completely the same”.

As the period progressed the curmudgeonlies amongst the Bison backers began to believe that their team were not going to be able to salvage anything from the game and such negative thoughts mushroomed even further when the Bees were awarded a penalty shot in the 36^th minute. A mistake by Balmer gave possession of the puck to Hubacek, who barrelled in on goal and was brought down by the hapless and indeed desperate D-man before he could get his shot away. Penalty shot! Hubacek picked up the puck and swung wide to his left, then came in close and released his effort. Dean “Deano” Skinns became the instant hero, much to the delight of all including Speedway Girl, holder of membership card number 001 of the Dean Skinns Appreciation Society. Down in the splits, he made himself big enough to thwart Hubacek and the puck bounced away off his body. No goal.

Perhaps this proved to be the turning point in the game. From a position of gloom, doom and despondency, 0-1 to the bad and a penalty shot against, Bison jumped on the escalator to Paradise within 2 minutes. A pass out of defense from Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird found Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov, who in turn fed Michael “Muzzy” Wales. Muzzy cut in from the right wing and unleashed a wrist shot which beat Mettam high blocker side. Level at 1-1. Now before I mention the next group of people, I would inform you that they really exist and, if you don’t believe me, Google their web site. O.K. so……. Had the Basingclog Morris Men been present they would have celebrated the goal by jumping to their feet with bells a-jinglin’ and dancing a stick dance to the tune of “The Jolly Weaver of Old Basing”. But alas they weren’t or, if they were, they were as incognito as the Man from MI5.

Now pegged back level it was the Bees who began to show their frustration or at least one of them, namely our old friend Ryan “You What?” Watt. He hooked. Had an aristocrat had been present he might have been moved to say of the offence, “I say that’s not cricket”. And he would have been right. It wasn’t cricket. It was hockey. Off to the box went Watt for the remaining 51 seconds of the period. The Bison power play came on strong, but three successive slap shots from the slot from Long Ciaron Long were all saved by Mettam. The Bees held out and P2 ended, but they still had over a minute of penalty kill to negotiate at the beginning of the 3^rd. They failed, as I shall relate, dear reader.

The beginning of the 3^rd saw a resumption of the onslaught. Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba’s pass from the point found Lumberjack Joe Rand wide and to the left of the Bees’ goal. Joe took the puck, drifted across the crease unchallenged and swept past Mettam, who had come out to stab the puck away. This left a gap as wide as a yawning hippopotamus, who hadn’t slept for 3 days, at the back door. Joe swept the puck home and it was 2-1 Bison. Long Ciaron with the second assist.

It was nothing more than Bison deserved, having outshot the Bees at a rate of 2:1 thus far. But a solitary goal advantage ensures that the outcome of the game hangs by a gossamer thread and Bison needed to take advantage of their newfound confidence to put the game out of sight. They continued to press in a period which was to see 20 attempts on goal. The reward came in the 48^th minute.

Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba carried the puck across goal but couldn’t get a shot in. The Bespectacled Youth wondered whether he was so far forward that the blood had drained from his brain. We can only speculate. It mattered not because he set up Cuddly Joe Greener with a slap shot chance from the slot. As the puck raced towards goal, Long Ciaron Long dangled his twig and deflected it past a hapless Mettam. 3-1 Bison. The reaction of the Bison backers to the goal could almost be described as indescribable. At last – daylight between the teams.

Shortly before the goal was scored, Referee Matthews took an accidental stick to the face. Just as Two Ton Ted from Teddington’s bun was sent spinning from his hand by a strawberry flavoured yoghurt thrown by Ernie in “Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West”, so Mr Matthews’s helmet was sent spinning from his head by the upraised stick. The hapless official was able to continue shortly afterwards and we hoped that the knock on his head would improve his decision making, but alas it did not.

On 54 minutes Andrew “Machine Gun” Melachrino copped a 10 misconduct for expressing his views following the Coach Sheppard slashing (or rather not slashing) incident. This enraged the Howling Man and he, like Andy Melons, let his considered opinion be known, albeit out of earshot of Mr. Matthews. To describe the Howling Man as being a mild and polite critic of officialdom would be as big an understatement as “Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were not very nice.” Any further description of his outburst is, therefore, unnecessary.

The Bees advanced to the last chance saloon, pulled their netminder, which ensured that their net no longer moved mysteriously off its moorings, as it had done on more than one occasion during the match. The 6 on 5 became a 6 on 4 when Declan Balmer was seen putting the unsavoury Scott Spearing in his place. He could have speared Spearing, but decided a right hook to the face was a more appropriate statement. Into the box he went. 24 seconds later it was 3-2 as the Bees scored a controversial goal, as described in the opening paragraph of this humble account.

To let the Bees in with a last gasp chance was as undesirable as the scrapings from the floor of a cheese processing plant (said scrapings are washed in chemicals, dried and ground up and used as cheese and onion crisp flavouring, so the Rabble Rouser of Block A reliably(?) informs me). A goal can be scored in the blink of an eye, as we know. Were Bison going to let the Bees level a game in which they had been outplayed and outshot by a considerable margin? Well no because, immediately from the restart won by Lumberjack Joe Rand, Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds fired the puck first time down the ice for an empty netter and 4-2 Bison. It wasn’t so much a case of “Oh my God. They’ve killed Kenny”, but more a case of “Oh my God. They’ve killed the Bracknell Bees”. With only 28 seconds remaining the Bees realised the game was over and back came Mettam thus increasing the possibility of more net off moorings incidents, but there was no need for this as the game came to a conclusion without further incident. 4-2 it ended and declared top bananas for their respective teams were Harvey Stead and Long Ciaron Long.

A final word for Mystic Jo, who had predicted a 3-2 win for Bison. Her prediction was ruined by the empty netter by Kurt “The Scissors”, who obviously hadn’t read the tealeaves himself. Perhaps he’s a teabag man.