Murrayfield Racers set for the biggest games since reforming

Murrayfield Racers face-off against Whitley Warriors on home-ice this evening (6pm), in the first leg of the National Ice Hockey League Cup North Cup final, a game defined by Racers’ director of hockey Tony Hand as “their biggest” since the club we’re reformed two years ago.

More than 1000 pre-game tickets have been sold, and Hand is hopeful of generating another cracking atmosphere, readily admitting the step up for the Scottish National League side, playing against teams from the UK-wide, but predominately English based, NIHL have been season highlights.

With the return leg to be played at Whitley tomorrow, Hand said: “It’s the biggest game Racers have played since they were re-formed, it’s going to be fantastic, we’re expecting a really good turnout. Every time we’ve played a team from the higher league we’ve managed to compete.

“We need to make sure we go to Whitley Bay with a chance to win it. What we can’t do is go down there giving ourselves too much to do, we need to keep it close.”

If he had his way Hand would have liked to have played the first-leg down south, and is now left to ponder how attack-minded to be at Murrayfield where they have already beaten Whitley 7-4 in the round-robin stages of the competition, and have only suffered two regulation defeats in all competitions this season.

“We are usually very strong at home,” said Hand. “We just need to do our best on the night. We can’t afford to get too carried away. It would be nice to take a lead away with us but any sort of deficit means having to chase the game in their rink. I would have preferred to have played away first because you often adjust your tactics for the second game.”

Racers will have Callum Boyd back for his first start after a month out, the former Edinburgh Capital was a thorn under the skin of a physical Whitley side in both of the group stage games between the two clubs. Warriors beating Racers 5-3 at Whitley Bay ice rink.

Hand, will be delighted to have the feisty winger back in the line-up, against a Warriors team who are just one win away from winning the NIHL Division One league title, and he continued: “We’ve got a few guys out injured or possibly just coming back from injury, we’re not as well-oiled as we were about six weeks ago, when we were playing Solway (Sharks) and Whitley in these games and playing really well. We’ve missed the guys who have been out – sometimes four or five – but they are slowly coming back.

“Whitley compete really hard, they’re physical but we don’t mind that, and we’re expecting it. They also have a lot of good players and we must match them over the weekend. We’ve done fantastic just to reach this final, but we’re an ambitious young club and we want to keep it going.”