BRACKNELL Bees need to ask some searching questions about themselves for the way they were dumped out of the NIHL Division 1 South play-offs at the weekend, writes Dave Wright.

They contributed to their own downfall, losing both legs as London Raiders sealed a 10-7 win on aggregate to reach the semi-finals.

At the Hive, Bees’ defending was shockingly awful at times whilst missing numerous scoring chances at the other end, leading to a 6-5 reverse in their final home appearance of the season.

Twenty four hours later, they showed an improvement as they battled to extend their season and at one stage the overall scores were level at 7-7.

But Bees went on to lose 4-2 and once again didn’t help their own cause with three players receiving 10-minute misconduct penalties at separate times, the last two offences coming late in the game.

In their eagerness to get on with the game, they were also called once for having too many men on the ice, an offence they had committed twice in the first 17 minutes on Saturday.

The home leg certainly didn’t go as planned.

Despite out-shooting their visitors by the wide margin of 46-23, Bees really messed it up in front of their own fans, who could hardly believe their side’s disappointing performance in what was their most important home match of the season.

Bracknell News:

Bees netminder Alex Mettam makes a save against London Raiders.

Bees had hammered the Raiders 6-1 only two weeks previously and the way the game started another home win looked a distinct possibility.

Sadly for them, it didn’t happen.

And the reason for that was largely down to their own failings.

They looked dangerous going forward, but very brittle when it came to defending, repeatedly being caught short on numbers as the Raiders counter-attacked in force and at a pace.

Their shortcomings had been exposed a week earlier when they conceded five goals to Swindon in the last 10 minutes, turning a 4-1 lead into a 4-6 defeat.

Bees didn’t appear to have learned any lessons as defensively they were often in disarray, with two defenders even crashing into each other on one occasion.

Individual errors enabled Juraj Huska and ex-Bee JJ Pitchley to put the Londoners two goals up inside six minutes.

But within three minutes Josh Martin had halved side’s arrears as he accepted one of Bees’ 13 goal attempts in the first 20 minutes.

It gave Bracknell a boost going into the second period and George Norcliffe brought the scores level in the 26th minute.

When Danny Ingoldsby struck home a superb third, it seemed Bees had turned the game around.

But they were not ahead for long.

Within a minute, it was 3-3 when more poor defending was punished by Slovakian Huska and a little over two minutes later the import set up his side’s fourth goal for Jake Sylvester.

And it got worse for the Bees with Czech import Marek Nahlik making it 5-3 for the visitors going into the second interval.

Bracknell pushed forward for the final 20 minutes and Callum Best netted a fourth just after the 45th-minute mark, only for Nahlik to quickly net a sixth for the Raiders.

For a short time, the visitors had two players in the sin-bin, but Bees were unable to take advantage of their numerical advantage.

They did score a fifth through Shaun Thompson with a little over 10 minutes left on the clock, but despite out-shooting their visitors 18-5 in this period, they were unable to prevent the Raiders grabbing a small, but valuable one-goal lead, which would have been larger but for some excellent saves from net-minder Alex Mettam.

Ingoldsby was voted Bees’ man of the match, the third time he has won the award.

Bracknell News:

Danny Ingoldsby receives his man-of-the-match prize.

With just a one-goal deficit , Bracknell were certainly still in with a chance of turning things round in front of a packed Romford venue on Sunday night.

But, after a goalless and feisty opening 20 minutes that saw Bees have only four shots on goal, they fell further in arrears when Matt Turner opened the scoring just nine seconds into the second period.

Bracknell managed to pull it back to 7-7 with power-play goals from James Galazzi and Josh Martin.

The momentum appeared in their favour, but that was until Jake Sylvester fired the hosts back in front by the end of the second period with what was a crucial goal in the overall contest between the teams.

The tension was building, but the Raiders hammered the final nail into Bracknell’s coffin with goals from Nahlik and Sylvester, the latter coming after Mettam had been withdrawn with a little over two and a half minutes remaining.

Bees’ final man-of-the-match award of the season went to Martin and this left him with five for the whole campaign, putting him joint top of the honours list with Shaun Thompson.

  • For more pictures see this week's News.