Swindon Wildcats miss out on play-off progression

The Swindon Wildcats were unable to pull off the miracle needed to qualify from Group B of the EPIHL play-offs at the weekend.

Going into Saturday's meeting at the Hull Pirates, Swindon were four points adrift of second-placed Basingstoke so the Wildcats needed to win both their matches and hope that Basingstoke lost their two as well.

Hope was offered by Swindon facing Basingstoke at home on what should have been a decisive Sunday, but even then the Wildcats would have needed to beat the Bison by three goals due to the head-to-head rule.

Play-off hope was extinguished as early as Saturday though as the Wildcats had to settle for an overtime win at Hull while Basingstoke beat an already-qualified Milton Keynes 3-2 at home.

Stevie Whitfield, Tomasz Malasinski Jonas Hoog, Sam Bullas and Max Birbraer (two) scored the six Swindon goals in their overtime win over Hull which they hoped would have made Basingstoke nervous pre-MK but the hosts remained calm and secured their progression.

Unfortunately for Swindon, and the club's fans, that ruled the final home game of the season as redundant, but there was no short of action for the supporters that decided to spend their Sunday evening at the Link anyway.

However, Basingstoke showed why they qualified ahead of Swindon, with a superb 7-3 thrashing of the wilted Wildcats.

The Bison went into a fairly early 2-0 lead, Birbraer got Swindon back in the contest but two more Basingstoke goals had the game at 4-1 as the singing fat lady started to vocalise even louder.

She was practically breaking the sound barrier when Basingstoke found themselves 6-1 to the good.

Malasinski kept Swindon's pride alive with a goal for 6-2, but the visitors restored their four-goal advantage when Tomas Karpov made it 7-2. Lee Richardson did score to give Swindon the final say in a season that, overall, they can be happy with though.