B Team Tournament Feb 6th 2000, Warwick

Pascal tries to break up Jade and James's attack during the game between the B and C teams.

Well, it was a B team tournament in that we supplied B and C teams. Everyone else had their A teams. Portsmouth brought along 2 of their top 3 points scorers and as a result were clear favourites. But by the end they were so worried by the prospect of facing our B team in the final that they were trying to persuade their A team goalie to stop skating and play in goal.

The C team played great. They improved each game they played and they had the B team and Imperial well rattled before just losing out at the end. I've never seen so much hustle by one team as they effort they put in against Imperial to get a point.

The B team were excellent too. After a slow start against York and conceding an early goal on a line change they battled back and their persistance was rewarded when Jiun skated through from defence and forced home his own rebound to tie the scores just as the final whistle blew.

The B team scraped wins against the C team and Imperial, but the winning goal against Imperial was a beautiful 4 man passing move started by Pascal and finished off by Matt. The two wins put them in a position to get to the final, but since York had also won two of their games and had a superior goal difference they had to get at least a point out of their last game against Portsmouth.

It was an awesome game. Portsmouth went 1-0 ahead but Pascal pounced on a loose puck to tie the game at half time. Early in the second period Ronnie pounced on a bad pass out of defence to give us the lead but Portsmouth tied it up again two minutes later. However with a minute and a half to go Fernando charged on from the bench and with his first touch put the Cougars ahead again. Portsmouth threw everything (legal and illegal) at us and scored with 50 seconds to go, but we'd done enough to get the point to take us to the final.

In the final we went 1-0 and 2-1 ahead but Portsmouth used their two ace players to rain in slapshots on the Warwick goal and inevitably some of them went in. They scored three goals in the final period, but considering who we were playing against (ie half the team that beat the A team 9-3 at the start of the year) it was a pretty creditable performance.

All the reprobates together ... Back (l-r):Pascal, James, Ian, Staffan, Kirsten, Steph, Cyril, Ed, Michael, Daniel, Matt and Parag. Front: Davie and Jiun, Jade, Damian, Fernando, Ronnie and KS.