Wednesday 12th March 2008
The Whalers coming off the huge demoralising loss on Saturday night needed a good result from this midweek fixture; we came with a different approach. Iggy was starting in nets and was to play the full game. Riley had stepped out of his huge pads to play defence. Barry decided to go with 3 lines of defence and 2 forwards. The third d line rotated three players.
The first period started and the Whalers had a bit of a jump in how they skated, throughout all players. With early goal to take the lead by Mark Dunne, who made the crossbar sound sweeter than ever; the Whalers jump became a leap. They went out and kept the pressure on and keeping the Rams at bay in the defensive zone and pushed out and got a power play late in the period. With an offensive mind set and high pressure the Whalers fired shots from the point at goal for a tip in, but it eventually came from the one timer of Stephen Lynch from the right wing pass of Ronnie Murray which found a way through the Rams keeper, that or because Bart was in the way (that’s his claim from the locker room afterwards).
Barry once again gave a motivation speech, unfortunately not quite the Al Pacino standard from 'Any Given Sunday' but a damn good one nonetheless. With his final words before the second period being “You are doing nothing wrong, so keep doing it” quite an uplifting comment to hear mid game.
The second period got under way and like the first the puck went end to end with a few opportunities at both ends. The Rams kept grinding away in their offensive zone and finally broke through the Whalers defence as the puck slipped between Iggy’s legs. With the score to 2 – 1 the Rams picked up their tempo and put more pressure on the Whalers, which slipped up a few times but was saved by the on form Iggy, and lots of blocked shots by the whole defence, the biggest one was a joint effort by Graeme Bell and Bart Gatensby which got Graeme just above the padding on the left knee, and then the poke checking to clear it out allowed Graeme to hobble off the ice.
The second period ended pretty soon after with the score
still at 2 – 1.
Barry was proud as he always is of his team as they kept
the score close. Another motivation talk lifting spirits
and energy levels just before the period began, then with
hands in and shouting “WHALERS!” Bart makes the classic
comment of “not in the middle of a game” all while
laughing.
Faceoff lost we started chasing from the start, but a very
early icing put us in their end quickly. The game continued
as it had done the first two periods, hard work. With the
game entering the final 7 minutes still at 2 – 1 something
had to give way, and it was the Rams defence, a breakaway
pass to Neil Black who got brought down. Delayed penalty
but a centring pass made but the falling Neil to the stick
of David Dunne who made no mistake when putting this one
top shelf. Just over two minutes later while short-handed,
although not looking it, the Dunnes’ and Neil connected to
score a shorthanded goal, Mark wristing this one to the
twine for his second on the night. Playing on like the game
was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs both teams fought
hard right to the end but Neil Black, scored a well
deserved goal but dealt a cruel blow to the moral of the
Rams as he scored with approximately 20 seconds remaining.
Final score: Whalers 5 Dublin Rams B 1
Well final someone has given me a reason not to give
Bart my man of the match, but I’m still undecided as to who
should get it. Iggy had a fantastic game in nets making
huge saves when needed and even had a go at baseball during
the game or the whole second line of Mark Dunne, David
Dunne and Neil Black who played a great game.
Report by Graeme Bell (#26 Whalers)