Hull Seahawks ready to roll again as they launch bid for NIHL National play-offs glory

While the disappointment over their National Cup showing against Milton Keynes Lightning last week lingered for a short while - the Seahawks losing out 10-5 over two legs - they were able to get back on the winning trail again soon enough.

An 8-3 win in Dumfries saw the Seahawks secure their first road win of the season over Solway Sharks on Saturday night before they returned home for a dress rehearsal of tomorrow night’s opening play-off encounter against Leeds Knights.

The Yorkshire rivals have proved a good match for each other this season, both enjoying moments to savour before they closed out their regular season schedule at Hull Arena on Sunday, the hosts prevailing 4-3.

And while both weekend results for Hull will have little bearing on the clash at Elland Road Ice Arena tomorrow - the two resume hostilities again in Hull on Sunday - Davies was pleased to see his players restore some confidence after their Cup final second leg misery just a few days earlier.

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Now he wants his players to do themselves justice and reward their own efforts in what is still only the Seahawks’ second-ever season by making it to the Final Four Weekend at Coventry’s SkyDome Arena on the weekend of April 27-28.

Davies, of course has fond memories of being at such a weekend as a player, part of the Hull Pirates team led by Jason Hewitt that won a dramatic NIHL One play-off final against Peterborough Phantoms. He was the main who laid on the pass for Bobby Chamberlain to secure a 5-4 win in overtime.

That triumph came just months before the birth of NIHL National, a new version of the UK’s second tier that was intended to be closer to the English Premier League which had collapsed two years earlier.

Davies stuck with the Pirates for NIHL National’s inaugural season before the pandemic curtailed everyone’s plans and, when he returned to the ice, it was for a 2021-22 season with the Knights.

But it is his hometown Seahawks where his interests lie now and he would dearly love to cap their second season with some silverware. And what better way to do that than in the very last game of the year.

“Obviously, I would still rather we had won the cup,” said Davies. “But after that we had a couple of days away from it and then I really wanted to get back in and get the lads motivated again and get into them.

“The message from me has been “don’t give up now, this year isn’t over, we’ve still got something big to play for.

“”We need to bring it for the next six games and then, all being well, two more after that.

“And, for me, that all started last weekend. I knew that we needed to go into the play-offs with some decent momentum and a little bit of confidence again, knowing that we can win games and beat teams, the best teams - and we did that.”

The Knights present perhaps the toughest test in Group A for Davies’s team, although both Peterborough and Bees IHC will also offer a serious examination of the Seahawks’ play-off credentials.

“The play-offs are going to be different, more intense - they often are,” added Davies. “We’ve worked so hard this year, that not getting to Coventry would feel like we’d let ourselves down in a sense.

“And I know we’re good enough to get to Coventry. If we play the way that I know we can play and that we’ve shown many times this season, then we’ll be in Coventry.”