Leeds Knights: Matt Haywood on three years of success and his final act at The Castle

The hope for Leeds Knights fans is that they will be celebrating their team’s passage through to the NIHL National Play-off Final Four weekend at Coventry’s SkyDome Arena - where they will be one step closer to landing an unprecedented treble.

But there is one other reason why Sunday evening will be a tear-filled occasion for the vast majority of the people inside ‘The Castle’.

After three hugely successful years, the final Group A play-off clash against Peterborough Phantoms will be Matt Haywood’s final game in front of a home crowd.

Having played a major role in the team winning three league titles, a play-off crown and, finally, earlier this year, a National Cup, the popular 34-year-old will be hanging up his skates.

Haywood’s exit will leave a huge hole on the Knights’ roster for the 2025-26 campaign, but his legacy will last for a long time.

Choosing to stop doing something you love so dearly is never an easy decision and it was no different for Haywood.

He will be missed in Leeds. He will miss Leeds.

But, after a 19-year senior career, the time has come to put his family, his daughters first and his new career off-ice career in project management back home in Glasgow, a city he grew to love soon after “taking a chance” and signing for Braehead Clan when it was first formed in the summer of 2010 and unveiled as the newest addition to the Elite League.

Haywood would go on to have 12 successful years in Scotland, proving one of the Clan’s most consistent and popular players, while off ice he met his wife and started a family.

In terms of silverware, it is in Leeds where he has enjoyed the most success, however, another reason why it will be so hard to leave it all behind.

“I remember when I first spoke to Ryan (Aldridge, Knights; head coach),” recalled Haywood. “He said it would be building towards winning something in the second or third year really, so that was the aim.

“Then the goals quickly changed when we had such a good start in that first season I had here.

“Listen, you could play forever if you keep winning all the time but, at some point you have to look at the bigger picture and realise that as good as it is and as good of an experience as it is, it is a young man’s game and they are getting faster and I’m not.

“It’s going to be tough because this is all I’ve ever done, all I’ve ever known. Hockey has given me what I’ve got today - a wife, two kids and a house and my life up in Scotland.

“So it is going to be tough to say goodbye to it but I’m at a point in my life where I've got a job that is quite demanding, two kids that are - as everybody knows - quite demanding and they need their weekends as well.

“So it’s just the right time to stop living the dream and let them live theirs now.”

Typically, Haywood is keen not to make Sunday night all about his last appearance in front of fans and alongside team-mates who have come to love him so much.

“I don’t want it all to be about me,” he insisted. “For a start there’s still a job to do and we still need to get to Coventry.

“But it’s going to be lovely that I get to say goodbye to lots of wonderful people. That’s something I never got a chance to do in Glasgow and is the one regret about my time there.

“So I am looking forward to being able to do that - but I’m not looking forward to it actually happening and the realisation sinking in that I’m not going to play there again.

“The way that the fans, the guys and Ryan, Steve and the staff have taken my family in and treated them has been fantastic.

“It has been an amazing three years for me.”