Hull Seahawks have NIHL National play-off 'mountain to climb' admits Matty Davies

With just over five minutes remaining of Sunday’s Group A play-off clash, the Seahawks had wiped out a 3-1 deficit against Leeds Knights to lead 4-3 thanks largely to a hat-trick from Owen Sobchak and a 50th-minute thunderbolt from Emil Svec.

They looked on course for a four-point weekend, but Leeds scored twice in as many minutes to switch momentum in their favour, eventually seeing out the game 6-4 to put themselves in pole position to reach the Final Four Weekend at the SkyDome Arena on April 19-20.

Hull, meanwhile, have to beat Telford Tigers twice in this weekend’s final round of Group A games and hope that results go their way between Leeds and Peterborough Phantoms.

It is not a lost cause by any means, but it is essentially out of Hull’s control - not the situation Davies wanted to find himself in given their failure to make it out of the group stage last year.

“I’m just gutted that we got ourselves into a really good position,” said former Knights’ centre Davies. “We should have won.

“We were the better team – I know they had moments – but I think overall we deserved to win.

“I’d seen Ryan’s (Aldridge, Knights’ head coach) comments about how they had lost the game at theirs and we didn’t win it – I didn’t agree with that.

“But that was definitely the case here. When you’ve got five minutes to see out the game, to concede two goals like that – that is losing a game.

“We had it in our hands to really stake a claim (to reach Coventry) and to fritter it away like that at the end, with five minutes left – it is a mountain to climb for us now.”

Knights’ head coach Aldridge hailed a “character win” from his players, having let victory slip from their grasp so late on home ice the previous night, Hull equalising with 13 seconds remaining before going on to win 7-6 in overtime.

“I questioned a few peoples’ character on Saturday, but this was a character win.

"We went down late in the game, we could have folded but we didn’t – that is character.”

Davies shouldered the blame in the aftermath of Sunday’s defeat, believing he had over-played some of his top players.

“I just went with who I trusted and who I felt like could get the job done at the time, I’ve done it many times, before,” added Davies. “But, looking at it, I overplayed them and we made errors that we should never make.

"There are a couple of players there, that don’t ever make them sort of errors. We should have won that game, we got into a position to win the game and we didn’t and we have to live with it now.”