After 10-year wait, Shamrocks can clinch cup tonight

GAME DAY: PETERBOROUGH AT VICTORIA Game 6, 7 p.m. at The Q Centre

The Victoria Shamrocks have waited 10 long, excruciating years to hoist the Mann Cup, but despite being just one win away from the 2015 national senior lacrosse championship, the team is taking nothing for granted.

“People are asking me if we’re happy right now. I say, no, we haven’t done anything yet. We haven’t won this series. We still have a long way to go,” said Dan Dawson, who has become the voice of reason for the hungry three-time Western Lacrosse Association champions.

Dawson had a huge hand in Wednesday’s 7-5 overtime win over the Peterborough Lakers with an assist on Corey Small’s game-winner and then adding the insurance goal to give Victoria its 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven.

Victoria can now win Mann Cup No. 9 tonight at 7 at what will be a raucous and rowdy crowd at The Q Centre in Colwood. The last time they won the crown was in 2005, also at home against the Lakers.

“It’s definitely a good feeling right now, but we haven’t done anything yet. It’s just a 3-2 lead and we’re going to have to be better,” insisted Dawson, who was brought in this year for his ability and leadership.

“Our preparation really is no days off, none in the nine nights scheduled. We definitely know this is a team that has come back from a 3-2 deficit in the East and there is a lot of character over there and they’re not going to quit, so we have to be even better.”

The exact words a hungry coaching staff and teammates want to hear as the feeling of satisfaction will not be experienced until that fourth triumph is secured.

But Game 5 was pivotal in the sense that the Shamrocks had failed to claim a third win of a Mann Cup series the last two years, losing 4-2 in games to Six Nations.

“We have accomplished something, we’ve got over the hump,” stressed Shamrocks head coach Bob Heyes. “The last two Mann Cups we could not get that third win. That was the next victory in which we needed to get over that hump.

“We won something huge in that the mental block that this core team had is gone. We got that third game. It was a huge victory because our confidence level is different,” he insisted.

But there is no sense of overconfidence as the Shamrocks know what the Lakers are capable of, having bounced back from a 3-2 deficit in the Major Series Lacrosse final against Six Nations to advance to the Mann Cup.

“They’re going to come out hard and Game 6 is going to be a great lacrosse game,” said Heyes. “Peterborough is going to still play that aggravating style, trying to draw penalties from embellishing and our mantra is, take that shot to the head and play through it.”

As will the Lakers and head coach Mike Hasen insists his team isn’t done yet.

One thing going in his favour is neither team has managed to win two straight in this series with Victoria taking Games 1, 3 and 5 and Peterborough taking Game 2 and 4.

“That’s not our mindset moving forward. We’re going to take [Thursday] to recover and get refocused and on Friday we’ll go over preparation and we’ll be ready to go Friday night,” Hasen said.

“Our last series we were down 3-2,” added Lakers goalie Matt Vinc. “We had to win Friday night regardless, that’s our focus and, hopefully, we come out with the same type of effort and maybe the ball will find the back of the net a couple more times and we’ll force Game 7.”

Or, just maybe, the Shamrocks and their fans will celebrate into the night.