Not one of our better tournament seasons but surprisingly our best ever finish at the Provincials….who would have thunk it?
Having a 2-10 record for the season, London Werewolves finished a strong 10th of 11 teams in the Senior loop. The 10th place team in an 11 team schedule matrix gets stuck with the 4 game round robin schedule – 2(!) games on Friday night instead of the normal single game. On the positive side, only our 3 best games get used to determine whether we move on to the semi finals.
In the early game on Friday night, 2nd ranked Toronto Beaches pressed hard throughout the game and rolled to an easy 10-1 victory over the Werewolves – no problem – we can use that game as the freebie! In the late Friday game, Werewolves put up a good fight and gave 5th ranked Huntsville a proper scare but we were unable to tie the game late and lost the 1st real game of the weekend 5-7. After some deliberations over pizza and beer, the Wolves retired to rest up for the key Saturday games. In the first Saturday game the Wolves scored early and dominated 8th ranked Barrie for one of our better games of the summer season – final score London 6 – Barrie 3. At 1-1, another victory would be enough to send the Wolves to never before explored territory – the semi finals. The opponent for this game was 4th ranked Brampton who we had beaten in the last game of the tournament season – could history repeat itself? Wolves opened the scoring early and maintained pressure resulting in a 5-1 lead going into the last half of the 3rd period. Unfortunately the wheels started to wobble as Brampton scored again and again yet again, closing the gap to 1 and finally tieing it up with less than a minute to go. Wolves had their chances to put it away before the tieing goal and again with seconds remaining in the game but it was not to be. Regulation time ended with the teams tied at 5 and Brampton was able to score early in O/T to move on to the Sunday semi finals. The Werewolves Sunday game was for the 5-6 teams against Whitby and a significant exodus of players on Saturday night pretty well ensured a 6th place finish – final score Whitby 12 – London 1. Overall Toronto Beaches ended 6Nations 2 year run of Senior championships with a seemingly easy 8-5 victory.
In any case, 6th place overall – best London finish ever! Overall, a pretty good season with lots of enjoyable games, fun times and some bright spots moving forward. On to 2019.
GO WEREWOLVES OF LONDON….AROOOOOH!
G2