Cheshire Phoenix are not a bogey team, insists Sheffield Sharks coach, as they bid to end losing run

It is a sequence of results that stretches all the way back to last September and which includes successive defeats in last year’s play-off semi-final best-of-three series and their first home game of the new Super League Basketball season last Sunday.

Sharks fans would therefore be forgiven for rolling their eyes when seeing that this week’s Trophy assignment brings an immediate reunion with Phoenix at their Northgate Arena on Sunday (5.30pm).

There is no shame in losing to Cheshire, over the past two years they have established themselves as the best of the rest behind London Lions on the back of their accurate three-point game, but Lyons believes there is nothing to read into the Sharks’ inability to contain that.

“We’re not really worried about one team in particular, they played a good game against us last Sunday and made some shots down the stretch and we weren’t sharp, we didn’t execute necessarily,” he said.

“Coming off the game on Friday night we needed to be a lot stronger in the first half and we blew a lead making a lot of mistakes.

“We were up by 12 and by half-time that had dropped to five or six just with poor decision-making. Cheshire is going to be one of those teams with talent, and they’re going to be good, but at this point, that wasn’t the issue. They got hot on us at the right time, took the lead and we didn’t do a good enough job responding to that. They’ll play a very similar style this year.”

Successive losses to Newcastle Eagles last Friday and then Cheshire 48 hours later to start the campaign had the potential to suck the air out of any pre-season optimism - some pundits have Sharks as second favourites for silverware behind London this year.

But as much as it leaves them playing catch-up in the Trophy, Lyons insists there are mitigating factors as he tries to bring in one final piece to finish his roster.

“I think we’ve had a lot of unusual circumstances we didn’t anticipate,” said Lyons, who confirmed he is actively looking for one more player.

“We played both games really tight, we definitely had spells where we had control of both games but we’ve not executed or played strong defensively at the end of the game.

“The fact we haven’t had the whole team to practise until probably this week, has worked against us.”