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Ben Callaghan: What A Weekend To Be A Cats Fan
Swindon Wildcats' fan and On The Prowl blogger Ben Callaghan offers his thoughts of the world of Wildcats, every Wednesday on Total Sport. Still on a high from last weekend's away game heroics, Callaghan reflects on two incredible performances.
Last weekend was a brilliant weekend for the Wildcats. Double road weekends are never easy, and visits to Milton Keynes and Peterborough were about as hard as it could be for the Cats with both opposition sides fighting over top spot in the EPL. The fans who saw both games were witness to 120 minutes of well-disciplined hockey, with some very impressive defensive displays from everyone in Swindon Wildcats jerseys.
Saturday in Milton Keynes was a game where there was always space all over the ice. The size of the MK ice pad was always going to allow the players time on the puck and time to split the defence up. MK are a team built on speed and skill so they are an incredibly tough team to beat at home. They’ve got great imports like Frankie Bakrlik and Blaz Emersic as well as very good brits in Lewis Hook, Jordan Cownie and Bobby Chamberlain. Swindon getting another win in MK was a very good result.
The game went all the way to penalty shots and the class of the Swindon imports shone throughout the game. Jan Kostal pretty much marked Bakrlik out of the game and the other 3 imports all had brilliant penalty shots. Carlo Finucci fired five-hole, Tomasz Malasinski was unfortunate to see his shot hit the bar and Jonas Höög showed everyone his stick control skill with his move to the backhand to fire into the empty net.
The man of the weekend has to be Stevie Lyle. Over 120 minutes of hockey and he conceded just the one goal in open play. It was two performances where Stevie rolled back the years and stopped virtually everything that came his way. He was seeing absolutely everything and made some unbelievable saves over the two days. Swindon really do have the best netminder in the EPL and this weekend he showed everyone why he’s deserving of that title. Peterborough could have played for four or five periods on Sunday and they still wouldn’t have scored.
The Swindon D had a great weekend and, while we all want to see pucks flying into the back of the net, the Cats forwards only scored 2 goals over the weekend. In the grand scheme of things however this was irrelevant, as they got the four points - and you could give me that over a 12 goal weekend where we scored 0 points. The wins are the important things and hopefully against Bracknell this weekend we can get one final win before the Christmas break, which will be well needed for the supporters and the players.
The one sour note of the weekend was the injury on Sunday to Carlo Finucci. It looked a bad injury at the time and hopefully he won’t be out of the line-up for too long. He’s a vital player to us and is key to our second line. The quicker we get him back the better.
I’d like to finish by wishing the GB U20 players the best of luck in their upcoming world championships. They’ll be away from us this weekend but they’re going to have a very good tournament and will do Swindon proud. Hopefully the guys come back to us with a medal just like last year.
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