Tom Watkins’ pride as Telford Tigers push champs all the way
Head coach Tom Watkins insists he is proud of his Telford Tigers side after they suffered a painful 7-6 defeat to Leeds Knights in the NIHL National League Final Four semi-final.
Having beaten second seed Milton Keynes in the quarter-final, Tigers faced off with National League winners Leeds with a place in the final up for grabs.
They took the champions to the wire with a valiant performance, and Watkins was pleased with his side’s performance as their season came to a close.
He said: “It was a tough game to lose, a very close game in a semi-final. I’ll take time to review the performance and evaluate the game at a later date. But right now I have a sense of pride in the steps we’ve made as a team since Christmas to be in the semi-final and to compete as well as we did. We took the league champions, the best in the league, very, very close. To come back from two goals behind in the first period to winning the second period and then taking the lead showed the fight in this team. Sadly we are not playing in the final but as a team we pushed the best all the way and we finish a difficult season knowing we made some big steps forward.
“The whole team dug deep, bought into the way we wanted to play and believed we could win and we were so close to doing that.
“It has been a long season and now is the time to take stock of everything and start planning for next season. I’d like to thank all the fans that came and backed us in Coventry, their support throughout the game was magnificent.”
Playing at the Coventry Skydome, Leeds took the lead through Kieron Brown before Brodie Jesson equalised for Telford.
Matt Haywood put Leeds ahead again and extended that lead through Jake Witkowski, taking a two-goal lead into the break.
Scott McKenzie pulled one back for Tigers and two minutes later they were level, when Vladimir Luka netted. Things got even better three minutes later as Telford took the lead, with Luka scoring again. Leeds stepped up the pressure and equalised through Archie Hazeldine, before Cole Shudra put them ahead. Mac Howlett extended their lead again before Telford hit back, when McKenzie got his second of the game. With 10 minutes level Tigers were level again when Luka struck, before Leeds found the winner when Brown scored again.
