Bristol Pitbulls 0 Leeds Knights 7: Captain Kieran Brown quickly makes up for lost time
LAST week saw how Leeds Knights were comfortably able to cope without one of their most influential players.
Saturday night showed what they are like when Kieran Brown is back amongst them – firing on all cylinders, keen to make up for what he would consider ‘lost time’.
There was little doubt the Knights would come off better against a Bristol Pitbulls team still smarting from shipping 20 goals across two nights against a rampant Hull Seahawks the previous weekend.
And while the Knights couldn’t quite match the strike power of their Yorkshire rivals, their performance – with back-up goalie Harrison Walker posting a shutout – was no less impressive.
Only three games in but, already, it looks as if the Knights will be there or thereabouts once again for the main prize.
The expectations are that they will be pushed closer than in the two previous years they have lifted the league title – quite probably by the Seahawks – but great expectations are what the Knights are used to.
Some teams underwent wholesale changes in the summer, while the Knights kept any alterations they made to a minimum.
They have a group who are used to wearing a target on their backs and, when it comes down to the final stretch in March next year, that could prove a decisive factor.
On Saturday it was Brown – who else? – who got the ball rolling with just 2.28 on the board.
Then it was the turn of Matthew Barron – hat-trick hero in the 7-3 win over Milton Keynes Lightning last Sunday – to take centre stage again, striking twice in two minutes to ensure the Knights were in control come the first intermission.
Mac Howlett then further increased the Pitbulls’ woes – they already seem destined to finish bottom again this season – when he made it 4-0 with less than two minutes of the second period gone.
Brown doubled his tally – this time on the power play – at 24.23, completing his treble early in the third, before another industrious performance by Ethan Hehir was rewarded with a goal at 56.20, completing the rout.