Buoyed by the fact that we had faced the best that the tournament would throw at us, expectations were high for our second game.
Our next encounter saw us face the first of the Belgium teams in our group and the Night-Wolves swept aside Haskey Hasselt with a fantastic performance and ran out 4-2 winners.
Night-Wolves faced the Belgium team Herentals next. Wolves only needing the draw to be sure of facing the winners of “Pool A” and the boys came good in a close 1-1 draw that guaranteed them second place in the group stage of the tournament.
The stage was now set for a Semi-Final against the other Tilburg side of the tournament the unbeaten Midnight Players. Night-Wolves where chasing a 1-0 deficit for much of the game but managed to hold off the Dutch offensive and began to break-out of the defensive end, and it was one of these break-outs that saw the Night-Wolves score late in the game to tie the Semi-Final 1-1 setting up the first penalty shoot-out of the tournament. An excellent penalty shot goal by Chris Rasmussen gave early hopes of victory but sadly Night-Wolves were unable to win the shoot-out and narrowly missed out on a place in the final to the team that ultimately won the tournament.
It was now still possible for the Night-Wolves to take 3rd place in the tournament but first we would have to play our last game against our old friends Brighton OSTIG on the final day of the tournament.
Through-out the tournament myself and other Night-Wolves players in particular Robert Formisano (Brighton’s Top Scorer) had guested for Brighton in order to help them out due to a lack of players. Rob and myself had now played 8 games in one day notching up almost 300 minutes of ice time and this of course was now taking it toll on the team. So in the spirit of recreational hockey the lads did the only thing they could in the circumstances they hit the town…or more precisely the town hit Robert Formisano quite literally when Rob and team Captain Will Holmes had a cycle race through the town whilst under the influence and due to a quirk of Belgium bicycles obtained in dubious circumstances Robert managed a most spectacular crash right outside the hotel to the horror of onlookers, concerns where high that one of our main goal-scorers might miss the final but this soon subsided when we realised that at 5 in the morning there was a good chance that the entire team would not make the final.
Hung-over the lads arrived at the rink early for what we thought would be a light hearted affair but it soon transpired that Brighton had not read the script and the Wolves where sobering up fast. Night-Wolves where now down to 10 men due to injury to Defence man Tommy Paris and we where left even more vulnerable due to the fact that we had also loaned our Defence Men Mark Reeve and Steve Richards to Brighton in order to keep the teams even. 3-1 down and little left in the tank the boys dug deep and 2 goals by Steve Paris clawed us back into the game, but with time running out on the clock another penalty shoot-out was inevitable.
Things started badly in the shootout and Brighton quickly took the lead but another excellent penalty shot by Steve Paris and we where eventually pulled back level. Now in sudden death the pressure was mounting on the shooters and goalies alike, team Captain William Holmes stepped up to the plate and scored the final penalty shot that secured the team a well deserved 3rd place trophy.
