Murrayfield Racers thrash Kirkcaldy Kestrels

Murrayfield Racers continued their march to a Scottish National League showdown with Solway Sharks later this month, thrashing Kirkcaldy Kestrels 15-2 at Murrayfield tonight.

Racers, boosted by a five-goal haul for captain Joel Gautschi, showed no signs of missing head-coach Tony Hand who, in his role as Great Britain head of player development, was with the GB Under-20 team that begin their week-long World Championship division 2A campaign in Lithuania tomorrow, and led 5-0 after the first period. A double from Gautschi, and goals from Garry Simpson, Marty Simpson and Michael Ireland helped to do the damage.

Kirkcaldy did score twice in the second period through Sean Cochrane and Allan Anderson, but Murrayfield continued to dominate. Ireland and Gautschi completed their hat-tricks, a second of the game for Garry Simpson, and goals from Rihards Grigors and Steven Clarke saw Murrayfield lead 11-2 after 40 minutes.

It was a torrid evening for Kirkcaldy, who had Robbie Summers ejected from the game late in the third period, whilst, for Murrayfield, there were two more goals for Gautschi, Garry Simpson grabbed his hat-trick, and man-of the-match Callum Boyd, who praised his team-mates for their clinical finishing, added a goal to his seven assists on the night.

Boyd said: “Kirkcaldy have always been a good team; we knew this wasn’t an easy game even if the scoreline tonight was pretty high. We really clicked and played well.

“All our plays were coming off, and we really finished off our chances which made the difference on the scoreboard.”

As far as team performances go, this was one of Murrayfield’s best of the season, a little surprising as Racers have had no chance to practise over the Christmas period.

And Boyd continued: “We’ve not had any training for two weeks, although we had games against Kilmarnock and Dundee in that time. Obviously, the guys are still buying into the systems we’ve been working on all season.

“We can go into practice tomorrow with a bit of a buzz, keep working on things and take that into our games this weekend.”