Sport is a fickle business with success judged on the slightest
of margins, a team can be deemed a failure by the most perplexing of moments.
If sport is inherently fickle then there is no more fickle than the sports
scene in Fife. This weekend both Raith Rovers and Fife Flyers will be going in
to the biggest weekend of the season, Raith in the Ramsdens Cup Final at Easter
Road and Fife in the Playoff weekend in Nottingham. If we are using the
arbitrary methods I alluded to above, barring a remarkable result on Sunday,
Raith’s season will probably be deemed a failure but undoubtedly - regardless
of the coming weekend - Fife’s season will be remembered for the ages and is an
incredible success.
It’s incredible how things can change so swiftly, if we were
to look back to November we would not have predicted this, momentum has played
a huge part and the teams have gone through a role reversal over the last 4
months. The attendances at Starks Park
and FIA over this timeframe has reflected this remarkable change in fortunes. If
we rewind back to November, do any Flyers fans think we would find ourselves in
this position? Now be honest with yourself, did you really give them a chance?
Come on, I’m not saying you booed them off the ice and burned your season
ticket but after the game on Hogmanay in Edinburgh did you really think that
you would be booking your ticket to Nottingham? If you did, then fair play to
you, you clearly are more optimistic than me and I respect your positive demeanour.
I thought we had a good set of players but not sure we had a team at that
point.
The off-season was so promising, the signings on paper
looked good, Fulton had outscored fan favourite Jason Pitton for Stockton of
the ECHL a few years ago, Regan had played understudy to the great Tukka Rask for
two years in the AHL and in Andy Contois we had the perfect foil to replace the
playmaking ability of the departed captain from last year, Casey Haines. You know
the old adage, as Ally McCoist said on FIFA 2003 for the PS2, “the game isn’t
played on paper”, which simply put is the smartest thing that Ally has ever
said. It’s right though and come October we would see that more and more,
regularly Todd Dutiaume would say in post-match interviews “you can’t force
chemistry” as someone with a Masters in this field from Heriot-Watt University
I can confirm that is indeed true. For whatever reason the team wasn’t
clicking, the marquee signing of Contois wasn’t looking like it was working
out, Kevin Regan – perhaps because he was used to a greater level of
professionalism than that in the UK game – hadn’t quite settled in yet, Justin DaCosta
was injured and Matt Nickerson was well… suspended. If we were to look back to
that time only Fulton and Derek Roehl would get pass marks, Fulton needed to
score more but was an energetic player and a constant threat and Roehl in his
second year as a pro was forging a reputation as an agitator who had the
ability to score a timely goal.
The arrival of Kyle Haines and the departure of Rok Pajic
steadied the ship, our defence was more stable and the moving Tim Hartung to
centre would prove to be pivotal in our playoff run. Soon after, Contois would
leave and a new fan favourite would arrive in the form of Ned Lukacevic. Ned’s
debut was televised on Premier Sports and he must have known that the cameras were
on him as he scored early on and helped the team to a dramatic win in overtime
with Danny Stewart – who, while we are on the subject, had his best season as a
Flyer this year, would be surprised if he has had a better Elite season –
scored his 100th EIHL goal. This victory was somewhat overshadowed by
the incident with Matt Nickerson and Chris Frank, resulting in a lengthy ban
for the big man. I don’t wish to go over that ground again but needless to say
this had a huge effect on the form of the team in the 9 games that Matt missed.
The Christmas period saw Flyers fall to the foot of the EIHL table but this is
the misconception that I think we have all fallen in to, the Flyers did not
make real changes in February, they tweaked a few things and we started to win
but we made the change on 14th of December by adding Lukavevic, in the
next 34 games he would score 44 points, that isn’t the result of a good run of
10-15 games he settled in a started producing, the reason for me that we did
not win more at the start of his time with us was that we were missing
Nickerson for the first 9 games, goodness knows the mess we would have been in
were he gone for the full 12 games, as was the original ban.
The role that Nickerson plays in the team is one-part
Cheerleader and one-part Pantomime Villain, that’s the role that all the
enforcers in the league play, we love Nickerson but hate Benny Olsson and Chris
Frank, the Coventry and Braehead fans feel exactly the same way about their
man. Nickerson is there to protect his team mates and is also there to get the
crowd involved. In the last game of the season, it was a 1-1 game and the crowd
had gone a bit flat, Flyers needed a momentum shift and Nickerson got them it.
When he dropped Bergin to the floor and raised his arm aloft to his adoring
public, he knew what he had done, he had lifted the crowd, lifted his team
mates and he had not knocked the wind out of the Braehead’s sail that was
gathering pace. I look back at that moment as the time I knew we were winning
that game and heading to the playoffs. I have an uneasy relationship with the
fighting hockey but will save that for another day, we needed that and “Nicker”
delivered.
The run to qualify for the playoffs was nothing short of
sensational, culminating in two nail-biting victories over Braehead on the
final weekend, the team had clicked and played some of the best hockey seen in
FIA in years. The sight of Ned Lukacevic or Jordan Fulton on the puck created
the level of excitement in the arena that a young Todd Dutiaume did in 1999. The
results didn’t go our way on that weekend, but come on did you really want to
sneak in through the back door? Of course you didn’t you wanted to explode in
and make a statement. Roll on to the next weekend a playoff game against
Dundee, a lot was made with Dundee’s “great run” but they were a shadow of the
team that had romped to the top of the table in the early months of the season.
The return of Rory Rawlyk certainly buoyed them and he played remarkably well
for a man who only has partial sight and has not played for a few months. The
first leg score of 4-3 to Flyers had a lot of fans nervous but the only thing
that really let Dundee in to the game was our nerves, the next night the
pressure was all on them and it showed that we could handle the pressure
better.
Now we find ourselves in the Finals Weekend, an unbelievable
achievement so much of the credit must go to our Head Coach, Todd Dutiamue.
Todd is in with the furniture and those blue seats that we got from Ibrox, he
has been a long serving player and coach and while his birth certificate does
say that he was born in British Columbia, he is Fife through and through. Long
regarded as a legend as a player winning the Grand Slam in 2000, the playoffs
in 1999 and winning the league in 2004, in the middle of all that having some
serious health concerns but still playing on. He is a remarkable guy and is now
very much in the legend category for what he has done as a coach. Whatever happens
this coming weekend the team have exceeded all expectations and I would happily
welcome them all back for next season where we do this all again, you know
without the 4 month blip at the beginning.
