Giants 0, Stingrays 2

Take note of the title. The Giants fans went on a road trip yesterday evening to catch their teams home game against Hull Stingrays. It was the first time the Giants have played a home game outside the Odyssey Arena since it has been opened. Remember the first half of the 2000-2001 season the Giants played home games on the road while the Odyssey was built. The trip to Dundalk did not change the Giants fortunes however as the defeats continued. This time the Giants sank to a new low, getting shut out by a team that from pre-season we really thought we should have beat.

It takes about an hour and ten minutes so long as you stay within the speed limits, to get from Belfast to Dundalk but a strong Giants fan base made the trip in something that most definitely resembled an away trip. A little like the days of yore when huge chunks of Giants fans making the away trips to Ayr or even more lately to Edinburgh, the Giants packed the small Dundalk arena to capacity and made a lot of noise. Certainly the fans could not be faulted for getting behind their team when they needed them the most.

Sure the attendance would have been bigger in the Odyssey but it wasn’t available this weekend and I think the crowd here would not have been much smaller than a mid-week game at the Odyssey. The positives were that rent of the Dundalk ice dome was considerably less and this forced all the Giants fans into the one small stand to make as much noise as possible.

The team couldn’t feed off the noise however and failed to take the multiple chances they served themselves up in order to win the game. There was no doubt it was an improvement on Tuesday night against Cardiff, but then I don’t believe it could have gotten much worse. For long periods of time the Giants where on top and they even played their most physical game of the season so far. Still, with all the good play when it came to doing the most important thing - putting the puck in the net - the Giants could not come through. Hull took their chance and followed it up with an empty net goal to take home the two points.

The Giants travel to Cardiff tomorrow night for a bottom of the table clash. There are little positives to take other than the fact that if they can find their scoring form they could possible sneak a result. Either way looking for positives in a two-nil defeat in a season becoming worse and worse by the week would be accepting some kind of mediocrity - something the Giants fans do not deserve and certainly are not used to.

Category: Game Recaps (07-08) » » Hull Stingrays |

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