Sheffield Steeldogs coach Greg Wood looking for NIHL National trophy double

The Steeldogs sealed third place in the overall standings after 48 games when they got the better of Yorkshire rivals Leeds Knights in a 2-0 win at Elland Road on Sunday night.

It means they go into a post-season play-off group with regular season runners-up Swindon Wildcats, along with Peterborough Phantoms and Basingstoke Bison, who finished fifth and sixth respectively.

League champions Telford Tigers - who take on Leeds, Milton Keynes Lightning and Bees IHC in the other play-off group - finished 13 points ahead of the Steeldogs, but Wood believes his team could have pushed them a lot closer had his team not been ravaged by Covid and injuries midway through the season.

A run of six defeats in seven games around Christmas and the turn of the year saw the Steeldogs lose ground on their title rivals that they were unable to make up once back to full strength.

Having killed off Telford’s hopes of a treble with an aggregate 8-5 win in the National Cup Final this week, Wood is looking for his team to complete their own double by adding the Final Four Play-off trophy.

“We set certain goals at the start of the season,” said Wood. “One of them was to get to a cup final which we did and we successfully won that.

“The second was to finish top three in the league which we managed by beating Leeds on Sunday. But, again, it’s a little bit bitter-sweet really because I think with the team that we have, if it hadn’t been for that middle period with injuries I think we’d have been pushing Telford a little bit harder.”

Wood, who hopes to have key forward James Spurr back from a long injury lay-off for the second weekend of the post-season, said his players’ National Cup triumph was fully deserved.

“After the first leg at home I think we did all the damage we needed to do, a 6-3 win gave us that little bit of a buffer going into the road game,” added Wood, whose team kick off their play-off campaign with a visit from Basingstoke on Saturday (face-off 7.30pm).

“But you can’t take that for granted and the way that we competed in that second leg was absolutely amazing.

“It was no more than the players deserved because they’ve worked really hard this year and there’s been quite a bit of adversity along the way, so for them to finish with a trophy is absolutely massive.”