Rivalry that shows no sign of abating
AFTER two seasons of fierce rivalry with their neighbours, the Deeside Dragons, the Widnes Wild ice hockey team were narrowly ahead on wins by five to three, however, the summer leading up to the 2015/16 season caused much discussion in both the Wild and Dragons camps.
Matt Wainwright went back to Deeside after just one season in Widnes and he was joined by import Filip Supa who had also chosen to switch allegiances. As the Slovak had been originally “discovered” and given his first break by the Wild team, many fans saw this particular move as the ultimate betrayal.
The arrival of Scott McKenzie as new Wild player coach – and then a batch of new players at Deeside controversially financed by the backing of the Red Hockey media group – suggested that both sets of fans were to be in for a fascinating season.
Widnes made a good start in their first game against Deeside at the Silver Blades rink on September 13, leading 2-1 at the first period break with goals from George Crawshaw and Geoff Wigglesworth and then going 3-1 up with a goal from McKenzie in the 23rd minute. However they were outshot by more than to 2 to 1 in the second period and conceded five straight unanswered goals to trail 3-6 heading into the third period. By then, the damage had been done. The Dragons came away with a 4-7 victory and Widnes were left playing “catch up” for the rest of the season.
Deeside topped the league pretty much from start to finish and, while the Wild looked fairly secure in second place, they were unable to take any points off the Dragons to close the gap.
A closer game at Deeside on November 8 saw Widnes narrowly lose 3-2 – the task being made more difficult than it needed to be as McKenzie was the off ice for the crucial last six minutes of the game with a major roughing penalty.
Valentine’s Day 2016 saw the Wild’s best result of the season against Deeside with a highly entertaining 7-7 home draw. It was the only point that Widnes would take off the Dragons all season but the Welshmen still had the last laugh as the result secured them Laidler Division title that same evening.
The fourth and final league meeting between the two teams – played at Deeside on March 26 – finished in a controversial fashion. With nothing to play for except local pride, the Dragons appeared to adopt an unnecessarily overly aggressive approach to the game.
Once again, Widnes scored first through Scott McKenzie but two goals from Adrian Palak saw Deeside lead 2-1 at the first break.
Early in the second period Wild netminder Greg Ruxton suffered a recurrence of an old knee injury after a strong challenge which put him out of action for the rest of the season and he had to be replaced by Widnes Wildcats rec netminder Ian Thirkettle, who had been called up as emergency cover for the game.
Before Thirkettle even had time to get settled, Matt Wainwright scored for the Dragons to put them 3-1 up and shortly after this, Wild’s Lee Kemp had to go to hospital to be treated for a head injury after a dangerous check from behind against the boards.
Keen to avoid any further injuries to his players with the play-offs just around the corner, coach McKenzie withdrew the team from the ice early. The score at that point stood at 3-1 to Deeside and the EIHA later decided that the Dragons should be awarded the win.
Widnes finished the season in second place in the Laidler Division table – eight points behind champions Deeside. Deeside had only lost one game all season while the Wild had lost three times to them and twice to Nottingham.
The two local rival teams also met in the 2016 play-off final at iceSheffield and, once again, it was a case of “so near yet so far”, with the Dragons winning 5-3 to secure the league and play-off double.
With Dragons winning promotion to the Moralee Division for the 2016/17 season, there would be no league games between the two teams for the following season, but the keen competitive spirit between the two camps would continue all the same.
With the Dragons winning promotion to the Moralee Division for the following season, there were no league meetings between Widnes and Deeside but still plenty of talking points. In June Scott McKenzie suddenly went to join the Welsh outfit as player coach, taking Chris Gee, Geoff Wigglesworth and a couple of “almost” signings – who had just been prepared to put pen to paper for Widnes – with him.
Widnes went on to have a good season in the Laidler Division, finishing second once again with Ollie Barron’s new look team, while the Dragons had a difficult time in the higher Moralee Division, winning just nine out of 28 games and ending up second bottom. This set of circumstances set up a mouth-watering promotion/relegation play-off game between the two local rivals as a season finale, to be played on neutral ice in Blackburn. That proved to be a closely-fought, yet bad tempered, encounter with 114 PIM being handed out and the Dragons eventually winning 4-3 in sudden death over time.
With Deeside still in the Moralee Division for the 2017/18 season, and Widnes still in the Laidler Division, there were to be no league meetings again between the two fierce rivals.
Next week: Rivalry brought bang up to date