'Horrendous' - Hull Seahawks blasted by coach Matty Davies while Leeds Knights and Sheffield Steeldogs prosper

Head coach Matty Davies has been provoked into delivering a number of withering post-match assessments on his Hull Seahawks team this season - but Sunday probably saw him at his most vexed yet.

Having been left angry at his side’s 9-4 defeat at perennial strugglers Bristol Pitbulls back in mid-October, Davies had been fully expecting his team to even the score when the two teams met again in East Yorkshire on Sunday night.

Come the final buzzer, the Seahawks were on the wrong end of an 8-6 scoreline, which further distanced them from NIHL National’s leading teams.

Unusually, Davies name-checked a number of players for criticism in his post-match interview - including goalies Jordan McLaughlin and Dmitri Zimozra and import forward Owen Sobchak - but it’s clear when taking the season so far into account - that the Seahawks boss is exasperated with more or less his entire roster.

Given pre-season hopes of being in among the front-runners for silverware, it has not gone as planned at Hull, already out of the National Cup reckoning and seventh in the regular season standings, already cast 13 points adrift of current leaders, Swindon Wildcats.

“That’s about as bad as it gets for me,” said Davies. “I can’t sugarcoat this - it is probably the worst we have played all year.

“We’ve had other bad results, but this was - top-to-bottom - really, really bad. From both goalies onwards, it was just horrendous.

“I don’t understand why, all I know is that it was nowhere near good enough at all - and we’ve had too many of them. There are way too many under-performing players.

“We were just terrible. It’s ugly to watch and I didn’t enjoy it at all.”

Despite taking the lead through Bobby Chamberlain, Hull found themselves 4-1 down after the first period.

With 33 minutes gone, they clawed it back to 5-5 through two second period goals apiece from Emil Svec and Johnny Corneil, but Bristol responded with two more goals before the intermission.

Lee Bonner offered hope with a 56th-minute strike but Jake Bricknell made sure of the points for the visitors 83 seconds remaining.

Ben Morgan marked his first weekend of action after a long-term injury by scoring the winning goal for Sheffield Steeldogs in a 3-2 win at Telford Tigers.

Trailing 2-1 after 40 minutes, the win - with other goals coming from Bair Gendunov and Morgan’s fellow defenceman Liam Steele - ensured a four-point weekend for Slava Koulikov’s team after Saturday’s 4-3 shootout win at Milton Keynes Lightning.

Leeds Knights ensured their NIHL National Cup defence remained intact with a 2-0 win at Basingstoke Bison, booking their place in the semi-finals.

Balint Pakozdi and Finley Bradon got the goals for Ryan Aldridge’s team, who remain one point off league leaders Swindon Wildcats having played a game more.

In the Elite League, Sheffield Steelers moved top with a convincing 5-1 win at Coventry Blaze.

Goals from Mikko Juusola, Dominic Cormier and Mitchell Heard put the visitors 3-0 up inside 25 minutes before Coventry got on the board through Jere Vertanen on the power play at 39.38.

The game was put to bed, though, through two goals in the last 10 minutes from Sam Tremblay.