Blue Tongues well deserved weekend off!

This weekend sees the Bartercard Gold Coast Blue Tongues and the Australian Ice Hockey League with a weekend off. For the Blue Tongues it is well deserved after completing eight consecutive games over the four previous weekends on the road. The team fared well despite being in four different states over four weekends and putting up with the rigours of domestic travel, with early, late, delayed and cancelled flights. Our record over the eight games was a respectable 3 wins, 3 losses, 1 shootout win and a 1 shootout loss.

The extended road trip enabled the boys to truly get to know each other, living in sometimes cramped quarters, travelling by bus to and from Canberra to Sydney (4 hours each way), enjoying many in room cooked meals as well as restaurant meals together. However, the game that made us a team when we look back on the season will be the last of the eight games, a hard fought 4-2 win over Adelaide last Sunday. What makes the result truly remarkable is we were handed our head on a platter less than 24 hours before going down to the same team 9-3. It would have been easy to go through the motions on Sunday, lose the game, return to the Gold Coast and focus on the final four games at home. However, the team rallied together Saturday night and Sunday prior to the game and the vibe walking into the dressing room was one of calm, determined intensity. Banter was about, "This is our last road game of the season", "we need to play with more intensity" "we need to stay out of the penalty box". I said to the team we all know what we need to do and we know how to do it, "it is just a matter of executing and doing it"

We received great goaltending early from CJ Anderson and on the penalty killing team. Shots after 2 periods were 29 - 12 for Adelaide and we held a 3 - 2 lead on the back of 3 goals from Brad Smulders. Now this is where it get's really good. The boys went out in the 3rd and proceeded to outshoot Adelaide 14-6, not giving up one good scoring chance to the opposition and scoring the only goal of the 3rd by Andre Selander, a truly well played road period to secure the victory.

We now finish the season at home with two games against Canberra on the 1st/2nd of August and then two games against Melbourne on the 15th /16th August. We need to win at least two of the four remaining games to mathematically eliminate the Sydney Ice Dogs. The boys will be going for wins in all four games so we are going into the final four weekend on a role and to keep our record at home an undefeated one this year.

See you on the 1st August.

Cheers
Kevin Sands