Cardiff Fire made the trip to the famous Ally Pally to take on the London Racers in the NIHL cup. The Fire were sporting the new Jacob Abraham foundation clothing to mark our partnership with the charity.
Fire made the trip missing a host of players, but such is the size of the squad this season still managed to take 3 strong lines.
Fire started brightly and didn’t take long to make the breakthrough, just 7 mins in a fantastic breakout lead to some great tic-tac-toe between Sam Bryant, Jordon Powell and Robert Sedlak for Sedlak to fire home for the opening goal. Just 4 mins later man of the match Ross Wilkinson made a superb break out pass finding Alan Armour who worked the puck towards Josh Haslam for Josh to Fire Cardiff 2-0 up after just 11mins. Sam Bryant made it 3-0 after just 13 mins after being set free by a Dave Christian pass.
The second period was quite chippy with London coming out hard, throwing the body at every opportunity, led by Jack Lee with some questionable hits. The Fire comfortably matched the physicality shown by London. Fire outshot London 16 shots to 3 in the 2nd period but couldn’t find a breakthrough.
With Jack Lee and Sam Bryant chipping away at each other during the 2nd period the pair decided to drop the gloves at the opening face-off for the 3rd. Sam landed a very good punch early on in the fight to send Jack Lee to the ice, easy win for Sam. The fight seemed to calm down some of the play but a hit from behind on Jordon Powell by Matt Brown led to Phil Manny and former Cardiff player Alistair Band drop the gloves for the 2nd fight of the evening. A further 19 shots on London goalie Mallet showed the dominance Cardiff held over London. With just 20 seconds to go in the game Jordon Powell scored a superb breakaway goal to make the game 4-0 to the Fire.
Sam Bryant 1+1
Jordon Powell 1+1
Josh Haslam 1+0
Robert Sedlak 1+0
Ross Wilkinson 0+1
Dave Christian 0+1
Alan Armour 0+1
MOM Ross Wilkinson
