By Lewis Rudd –
REMAINING in sight of the play-off places would represent a happy Christmas for Bracknell Bees player-coach Lukas Smital.
The Czech and his roster currently sit five points behind eighth-placed Sheffield Steeldogs ahead of a five-game run for the club over the festive period.
A narrow 2-0 loss at bogey side Peterborough Phantoms on Sunday night means Bees missed out on the chance to move to within a win of the South Yorkshire side.
Smital, however, is just grateful to be in such a position given the financial uncertainty the team faced over the summer.
He is also keen for his charges to keep building on the improvements witnessed in recent weeks, telling The Wokingham Paper: “It is not just the positives from this (the Peterborough) game, but if you look at our record from the past 16 games it is much better than the first 12 to 15 games.
“That’s the way to look at it.
“This is a young team and a lot of the guys still have a lot to learn, and this will come from experience.
“You don’t learn anything when you keep winning. When you are under pressure, how to be coming back, how to hang on to a tight lead – it is those situations when you learn.
“Apart from maybe one or two games when we have won comfortably, everything has been very tight and unfortunately we have lost a lot of games by one goal or two, but what is important is that the players know that we have to play hard every night and keep going.
“Our squad is good, it is just unfortunate we are where we are, but we are moving forward little by little and we are trying to catch up with the pack, and that is the aim.
“But if someone told me you are going to be in this position in May, I’d have taken it.”
Goals from Sam Towner and Petr Stepanek sealed Phantoms the points and a 22nd consecutive victory over Bracknell, a sequence of results which is almost nearing the three-year mark.
Given this wretched record, you could forgive the camp for wanting to write off such fixtures given Bracknell have picked up just the odd losing bonus point during this time – and even the coach was at a loss to explain the situation, although he did say this run of results “needs to be broken one day”.
“I don’t know what it is,” he admitted.
“It is something you think about afterwards, but we approached the game the same as we do against anyone else.
“But then you look at Guildford (Flames) who are supposed to be outstanding every year, but we have a decent record against them, so it balances it out.”
Yet he had few complaints from the display produced by his side over in Cambridgeshire, who saw such efforts thwarted by an inspirational performance from Peterborough netminder Janis Auzins, who was simply not for beating – despite Bees mustering up 37 shots at goal.
This was, he revealed, following a week when training plans were disrupted by ice issues at The Hive.
“I thought we played well. We worked hard and had a lot of chances to be fair, but we got denied by Auzins, who I thought was outstanding for them,” added Smital.
“He just shut everything down, but overall out performance was really good. OK, we made two mistakes and they capitalised on them, but all in all I was happy with it.”
Attentions for Bracknell now turn towards a double-header with near neighbours Basingstoke Bison, which begins over at Planet Ice on Saturday (6.30pm).
Another round of back-to-back matches, this time against fierce rivals Guildford Flames, follows this on December 26 and 27 before the Phantoms once again lay in wait on December 29.
Smital hopes to have both Josh Tetlow and Josh Smith back from GB Under-20 duty for the game with Bison at The Hive on Sunday, but reported no other potential absences.
He said: “We have got to be prepared and play our game.
“It always is a lively encounter, but again Basingstoke is a tough team and they announced a couple of new players at the weekend and unfortunately we don’t have that kind of luxury, but it all comes down to doing whatever it takes to get the win.
“I would definitely like to pick up some points over Christmas.”
