London Raiders forward Jacob Ranson is writing a blog during the 2014/15 season

East London Advertiser: Raiders forward Jacob Ranson lets fly in the last meeting against Invicta (pic: John Scott)Raiders forward Jacob Ranson lets fly in the last meeting against Invicta (pic: John Scott) (Image: Archant)

Life of a hockey player: we always seem to want new kit, but most players hate breaking it in.

I’m feeling that this week as the new skates are very stiff and hurt my feet a lot so far. But they look good – that’s the main thing!

In all seriousness, last week’s performance at Solent wasn’t good enough all round and we must be stronger as a team.

We fell apart as the game went on, but without dwelling on it too much I feel the performance has been addressed after the game and in training.

On the bright side, Perry Richardson has obviously been working out too much as he played a good game picking up a pair of goals.

I’m sure that means plenty more to come from him, as he always works hard in games.

Thursday’s training saw a lot of things we need to work on improving in the session and will hopefully follow on into the big game this weekend.

Besides the on-ice action at training, the rookies tape jobs and kit was being tampered with before and after: standard rookie treatment in a hockey changing room!

The game tomorrow is our second cup game against Invicta. Losing the first time round wasn’t fun, so hopefully we can put amends to that and get our first cup win of the season.

A plus for us is Invicta, by the looks of things, will only have one import for the game with Greg Chambers released from the team earlier in the week.

But we have seen already this season they are quick skilful team, so we have to shut them down and stop them creating chances to be successful.

It’s always a good atmosphere away to Invicta so hopefully we can embrace that and give the fans something to cheer about after these three losses on the bounce as they’ve done a lot for us this off-season.

Luckily and unluckily for us, the league has had a very strange start, with unexpected results across the board leaving the standings very jumbled so far.

But this is good for the league, meaning tighter games and never an easy match.

At least we aren’t the only team to have a slow start, so hopefully we can start climbing up the league with some wins.