Bison demolish Raiders

BASINGSTOKE UK: The Basingstoke Bison reeled off their third consecutive win of the season beating Romford 6-1, to maintain their best start to a league campaign for years. The scoreline may have looked one sided, but it took the Herd 40 minutes to get their offence going in this EPL clash, but when they did it was devastating as they hammered home five final period goals. After two sessions at Rom Valley Way, the game was tied after Raiders’ Dean Tonks cancelled out Ondrej Lauko’s first period strike. However, the visitors then ran riot against the Essex Boys, as Steve Moria and Lauko gave them some breathing space by the 48^th minute. The Herd were now starting to open up the home defence and Ollie Bronnimann added the Bison’s fourth. The final two strikes for the visitors came when Sam Zajac enjoyed a two minute rest in the sin bin for slashing. First Slovak Lauko netted to complete his back-to-back road hat-tricks, before Canadian Joe Ciccarello opened his account for the season with the Bison’s sixth and final goal. The previous night, the Bison defeated the visiting Peterborough Phantoms 2-1 to record their first home league win of 2009. Mindy Kieras hit the post in the first period, which also saw Basingstoke player/coach Steve Moria call a time-out. The home side finally got on the scoresheet in the 37^th minute as British forward Chris Wiggins scored his first goal of the season. Lauko maintained his impressive scoring streak with the second, before Brent Gough set up an exciting finish as he broke Davey Lawrence’s shut-out with five minutes left. “I am pleased we took the four points, but we did play as well offensively as we can. On a positive note both our netminders had great games this weekend, ” said Moria. Contact the author graham.merry@prohockeynews.com