Widnes Wild head coach Mike Clancy praised his side’s recent victory over Telford Tigers 2, and believes it could kick-start their season.
The Wild have endured a turbulent start to the season, with the playing squad ravaged by injury, alongside personal reasons that have led to unavailability.
“It wasn’t a must-win game, but it was great opportunity for us to pull everything back together as a team,” Clancy said.
“We’ve had quite a bit of unfortunate things happen to us as the season started, a lot of injuries came in, and we’re still missing [Michal] Novak.
“We had three incidents of death within our team so, we’ve had a lot of disruption to start our season,” Clancy explained.
Despite the unfortunate circumstances that surrounded Widnes’ start to the season, the Merseyside club secured their second league win of the season against Telford, and ended a three-match losing streak in all competitions.
“This was a good win for the boys that were together, working hard for each other, and a good start to getting things on track again,” Clancy said.
The Wild were in impressive form on Sunday night, and demonstrated their scoring ability by putting nine goals past a Telford side currently fourth in the league.
We’re capable of it (winning by such a big margin), I don’t think Telford brought their best ‘A game’ tonight,” Clancy admitted. “I think there’s a little bit more to come when we play them next time, but I think its reward for the boys’ work ethic.”
As Telford’s frustrations grew in the second and third period, there were a couple of altercations that lead to both side being handed penalties, but Clancy insisted that this was not uncommon in ice hockey.
“This wasn’t a feisty game, absolutely not,” he stated. “We saw one incident where the instigator came in and sticked Chris Gee and Chris has dropped him with a couple of punches.”
“It does happen in the game, it does get physical, but this wasn’t a physical game today.”
Widnes are several games behind their rivals in the Laidler Division due their cup commitments, and Clancy holds the knockout competitions in high regard, with respect to developing his side for the future.
“Targets for the season haven’t changed; it’s to have a successful cup run, for us to understand what we need to do in the league above, and to go and win the league to enable us to take those steps into the next season.”
Widnes have won the league and play-offs in the last three seasons, but the club haven’t progressed into the higher division for a variety of reasons.
Last season, the Wild lost a number of important players that meant competing in the higher division would be difficult.
“The team sort of disbanded quite a bit, so we lost a contingent of players from Sheffield that were real, real high calibre players and they allowed the team to compete at every level.”
“We didn’t have that this year it was a fresh start, we brought a lot of youngsters in so you’ll see a lot of youth, and a part of that now is getting them established so they can compete at that level.”
With his playing squad now stabilised, Clancy pondered whether he side could be competitive in the superior Moralee Division.
“Believe or not those two imports, and a combination of some of the youngster we’ve brought in, and senior players being fit, we probably could compete at the next league, but we weren’t to know that.”
We wouldn’t have challenged for a title or anything, but we would’ve challenged for maybe mid-table,” Clancy said. “Would the fans want that? I don’t know, I think it’s a year of establishing ourselves and setting up.”
Peter Toth scored his sides eighth goal during the rout of the Tigers, and was awarded MVP following the game after an impressive performance on the ice.
Toth was quick to praise his teammates as they put last week’s devastating penalty-shootout loss to Nottingham Lions behind them.
“Our system started to work, it was a must-win and the boys worked hard today,” Toth said.
“It was a good performance by us, and it was a pretty enjoyable game.”
Toth also highlighted how the cup could prepare them for the higher divisions, but insisted that the league is their first priority.
“Win the league and win the play-offs, that’s our first target, in the cup we play against teams from the league above, so it’s good for us to practice and see what the next level is like but right now our main goal is to win the league.”
Toth continued to praise his teammates, but was delighted with his MVP award.
“Of course, I mean it’s a team a game, it’s a team performance but it’s always nice to be appreciated for your efforts,” he beamed.
Widnes have an upcoming league game against Bradford Bulldogs, and Toth believes it could be a chance for revenge, after the Wilds loss to the South Yorkshire side earlier in the season.
“Obviously we want to win every game we play, I think we played quite poorly last game against them, so I think we have really good chance of beating them.”
“I think our team is really good, so I expect nothing less than beating every team”.
