Rumble on the Isle of Wight

BRISTOL, UK –   The fixture between the Isle of Wight Tigers and Bristol Pitbulls ENL 2 will be remembered not for the hockey, but events that ensued in the second period of the match and have prompted a lot of heated discussion in the UK hockey community.

The Pitbulls ENL 2 side made the trip to the Ryde arena in hopes of snapping a five-game losing streak and things seemed to go to plan with the team being down 3-1 at the end of the first period, in what had been a very physical affair. The Tigers   are having a good season, sitting 6th in the table, while the Pitbulls are down in 12th.
The second period got underway, with the Pitbulls seemingly taking their foot off the gas and letting the Tigers run away with the score and hopes of a win fading fast. Tigers got goals coming in thick and fast from their entire line up and soon the Pitbulls found themselves 9-2 down. However, things turned sour midway through the second period when Isle of Wight’s Joe Osbourne gave a few shoves to Pitbulls Player/Coach Ian Clark. Things had seemed relatively innocent up until this point, but the incident lead to much worse. 
The Tigers’ Adam Rich left the bench to deliver a sucker punch from behind to Pitbulls youngster Adam Young’s head, which drew a response from Clark as Young had fallen to the ice. The referee, Tim Pickett, and his linesmen had a hard time separating the fight, but managed to claw the Isle of Wight forward away from the fight. Things seemed to calm down, but after only a few seconds Rich was taking another charge at Clark, again, from behind this time and Clark was fortunate to have the referees get in the way just in time. At the same time a few extra Isle of Wight players had left their bench to come to the ice to witness the action first hand. This then sparked a fight between the Tigers’ Michael Palin, who also came off from the bench and Pitbulls’ Dave Hopton, and also saw the Pitbulls’ Slovakian import Marek Geroc fall in to separate the pair. Hopton left the ice bloodied with a suspected broken nose. For the second time things seemed to have calmed out, only for a fight to break out on the bench between Pitbull Jamie Rich and Tigers’ veteran Tony Blaize and this led to Adam Rich trying to make his presence known despite being ejected just seconds earlier and being held back by his team mates and managers. However, video footage later showed Adam was trying to act as peacemaker. Following the fight Pickett ordered both teams back to their respective changing rooms to calm down the situation. He also called an end to the second period early   as a result of the brawl. The extended period break saw the referees sort out the penalties and determine whether the game was to be finished or interrupted. The Pitbulls had lost Adam Young to a head injury, but later had Hopton return to the game despite his broken nose, prompting the Pitbulls’ supporters to rename him as ‘ Killer’, after the character in the movie ‘Slapshot’.   Things got back under way, with tension remaining between both teams and the Pitbulls were playing 15 minutes on powerplay as Adam Rich was awarded 3 match penalties for his part. An attempt at a comeback looked to be on the cards. Things seemed to fall together as the Pitbulls rallied its power play and quickly mounted plenty of offence on the Tigers net, guarded by the young Dan Weller-Evans. Evans ended up facing 51 shots in the game and allowed six, four of which came in the third period. The Tigers managed to score one more goal in the third to make the final score of the game 10-6 to the Isle of Wight side.
The video of the fight has been uploaded to YouTube  and shared across many social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and has drawn a shocked response from the UK hockey community. The game is sure to have cost referee Pickett a few nights’ sleep while he has been writing his report of the game to the league. According to The Hockey Forum, the Isle of Wight Tigers have released Adam Rich because of the incident and distanced themselves from his actions.  
Contact the author Janne.Virtanen@Prohockeynews.com