Captain Smith reflects on Solent slump

East London Advertiser: London Raiders players meet a reindeer during a team day out to Paraside Wildlife Park, who sponsor the club (pic: John Scott)London Raiders players meet a reindeer during a team day out to Paraside Wildlife Park, who sponsor the club (pic: John Scott) (Image: Archant)

London Raiders captain AJ Smith has called his side’s defeat at Solent their ‘worst performance’ of the season.

Raiders travelled to the south coast looking for a repeat of last month’s 4-1 win and goals from Perry Richardson, Tom Davis and Vaclav Drabek put them 3-1 up at the first break.

But the hosts hit back to level at the 40-minute mark, then dominated the final stanza to skate off convincing 9-4 winners as Raiders capitulated.

Smith said: “It was not a good day at the office.

“I don’t want to make this too negative, but there’s not much good to say about the game I’m afraid.

“No disrespect to Solent but it’s a game we should have won with the team that we have and there are no excuses for our performance.

“Solent played well but we just fell apart, especially in the third period. We played two periods of very mediocre hockey and it was 3-3 and then in the third I don’t know what happened.

“There was no heart and no fight and it was our worst performance of the season so far by a long way!”

Defeat made it three in a row for Danny Marshall’s men, following losses to Invicta and Chelmsford the previous weekend.

And they are due to visit the Dynamos for a cup tie on Sunday in their only fixture of this coming weekend.

Smith added: “I’m sure Danny will address certain things in training this week and hopefully we’ll come back fighting.

“There were some positives. Perry scored his first two goals of the season and is a great player who took a couple years out, but is now getting back to his best. I expect a lot more goals from him.

“A few of the younger lads can be proud of the effort they put in during the game too, but on the whole it was very disappointing.

“When you’ve played a game that bad things can only get better now moving forward.

“I’d like to once again thank the fans that made the trip to support us and apologise that our performance didn’t match their dedication.”