GARETH Chalmers, Braehead Clan’s hockey and operations director, says that his team’s fans shouldn’t panic, despite losing 6-0 to Sheffield Steelers on Sunday.
That heavy defeat immediately followed two overtime losses, against Belfast Giants and another against the Steelers, which has left the Clan’s fans somewhat disgruntled – feelings that Chalmers shares – although he believes that things are not all doom and gloom.
“It was a challenging weekend that’s for sure – we came up against two of the best teams in the league, so to come out of that with two points from the two home games has to be taken as a positive,” he said.
“However, we’re trying to build this new look organisation around continuity, so it was disappointing to finish the weekend with a heavy defeat in Sheffield.
“I can totally understand that there’s a lot of frustration but as a club we need to stick together and keep working hard at putting things right.
“All I’d ask of the fans is that they stick with us and we will get there together.”
Braehead have finished the league in second and third place in recent years, results which have increased expectations greatly but Chalmers is keen to stress that continuous, unbroken improvement is never a guarantee in elite sport. “The seasons we finished second and third, we probably over-achieved, but the
EIHL has progressed a lot since then and with the increased expenditure the top teams now have, it’s making
it more difficult for us to compete,”
he said.
“But that isn’t an excuse and certainly shouldn’t stop us from being ambitious – we still want to be up there towards the top of the league, challenging for silverware, so it’s all about finding a way to make that work.”
Chalmers reveals that the team are looking to make changes to the roster and recruit new players and he is confident that recently-appointed head coach John Tripp is the man for the job and has the players at his disposal to turn things around, starting with their match against Edinburgh Capitals this Saturday.
“It’s a big game for us on Saturday – we need to go into it fully focused because it’s a must-win game for us now,” he said.
“If we want to start moving up the table, we really should be beating teams around us. The players are low on confidence but a win or two will get that confidence back and that will help us turn the corner.”
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