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Invicta Dynamos 4 Slough Jets 2
INVICTA Dynamos' ice hockey clash with Slough Jets ended in farce last night as the visiting team skated off the ice in protest at the referee.
Jets' team manager Pauline Rost made it clear her team had no bad feelings towards the home side and they would not dispute the points going to the Mos. All their anger was directed at one man, Gary Plaistow, who took pedantic refereeing to new heights.
Rost said: "He brought the game into disrepute. He did not allow the game to be played in the right spirit. Players work hard and clubs spend a lot of money to promote the sport and this type of performance undermines that."
Despite the referee's antics, the Mos were good for their 4-2 win and achieved their weekend's aim of taking all four points, after they also beat Telford 6-4 on Saturday.
Player coach Carl Greenhous said: "Telford was a tough road trip and we were without Sean Clement, Paul Hume, Jon Grey and Kevin Parrish, but still came away with the win.
"We also beat a top tier team so have to consider this a successful weekend, but we certainly have lots of areas of our play we need to work on in training.
"As for the refereeing it's not for me to question his calls, we were only interested in playing hockey. Full credit to Slough though, who played well in what was a tough situation."
It was the second night in a row that Plaistow took charge of a Jets game and the second night that he handed out unbelievable amounts of penalty time.
Slough played Romford on Saturday, but the hockey was overshadowed as the penalty box was occupied for the majority of the game as 149 minutes were called.
A repeat performance the following night saw the Jets penalty box rarely unoccupied and usually crammed full of three or four players, especially in the second period when Jets were called 70 minutes to the home side's two.
Overall 179 penalties minutes were called on the Jets to the Dynamos 10, with netminder Simon Smith chucked out for questioning what was a dubious goal and Matthew Foord ludicrously given a 10 misconduct for knocking over Plaistow who was in the way of play.
Other recipients of big penalty calls were Adam Bicknell 2+10 cross-check from behind, Jason Reilly 10 misconduct for also disputing the goal and Warren Rost 5 + game for slashing.
The only player whose crime deserved the punishment was Marc Long who received a gross misconduct for gesturing to the crowd.
The first period was largely unaffected by Plaistow and the hockey on show was end to end entertainment. Mos were on top, but against the run of play Long finished from Rob Coutts and Bicknell.
The staggering second period had a penalty called on average every two minutes and the Jets were so short that they only mustered two shots on goal.
Nine seconds into a three on five powerplay the Mos made their numbers count as Greenhous' superb rink-long pass put in Duane Ward at 25.58.
With Slough struggling to keep their composure at the referee who sin-binned 11 of their players in the 20 minutes of play, Mos should have taken more advantage on the countless powerplays in their favour.
They thought they had taken the lead when Phil Chard's brilliant shot caused the goal light to flash on, but Plaistow waved it away.
Two minutes later it was a goal, but Duane Ward's shot looked like it came back off the crossbar without fully crossing the line. Netminder Smith lost his rag, was ejected at 38.01 and the period finished 2-1 to the Dynamos.
The crowd were loving the injustice of seeing the visitors put to the sword, and their disbelief and barely concealed rage was strangely captivating.
Plaistow then made a correct call on Long for diving at 46.25 and Slough paid the price when Matt Beveridge put the Mos two up.
To give Slough credit they battled against adversity and pulled it back less than a minute later through Foord.
Incredibly the Mos fans were left facing a tense last 10 minutes, when in reality the game should have been out of sight.
But man of the match Peter Korff came to the rescue at 56.05 with one of those fantasy "he shoots, he scores" moments. He connected sweetly first time to a bouncing puck and let go a thunderbolt that was too hot for netminder Adam Dobson to handle.
Slough were beaten and the final straw came when Rost was called for a non-existent slash, which resulted in the team called off ice with 11 seconds of the game remaining.
BLOB: Kevin Parrish has retired from ice hockey. The 27-year-old forward who has played 175 game for the Dynamos has had to quit because of commitments outside hockey. He admitted he could not give 110 per cent in a game that required it from all its players.