Altrincham Aces

Bradford Bulldogs 1 v Altirncham Aces 11

THE Altrincham Aces officially secured their place in the English Division One Playoffs last Sunday night in emphatic fashion, powering to an 11-1 away win over the Bradford Bulldogs.

The Yorkshiremen may be the only winless team in the league, but they certainly didn't roll over and die for their visitors, and in the end it required a full team performance from the Pack to make sure they grabbed the necessary two points and begin their preparations for the postseason.

Given Bradford's bottom-of-the-table league position it appeared that many of the Aces regarded the match as something of a formality, but the visitors were shocked into life in the fourth minute when the Bulldogs' ever dangerous Michael Kershaw put team-mate Christian Wareing through to score the game's first goal, only their 12th marker in 14 outings this season.

The Pack responded by laying siege to the Bradford net, but despite exerting some tremendous offensive pressure and barely letting their opponents beyond their own blue line, veteran goaltender Iain Hanson turned in a magnificent performance to restrict the Aces to just two goals from Arran Richardson and Pete Winstanley from over 30 shots faced.

The story continued into the second session with the Pack still seeing the overwhelming majority of the possession but struggling to turn it into a rush of goals.

Their cause was not helped by some overzealous officiating which saw both sides penalised on numerous occasions for niggling fouls, and the Aces attacking rhythm was seriously disrupted both by a repeated man disadvantage and some determined Bradford defending.

Two further goals did follow courtesy of Tim Dempsey and Greg Allen, but at the game's forty minute mark the scoreline was just 4-1 and the gritty Bulldogs were still dreaming of an upset.

Altrincham's high-flyers thought differently however, and when player/coach Dave Shepherd netted just after the restart, the signs were that they were beginning to wake up from their scoring slumber.

Arran Richardson and Darren Molloy added further strikes within the space of a minute, and from then on the floodgates were open as wave of fluent attacking moves swamped the brave Bulldogs.

Four more goals followed in the final stages from three different sticks, Ged Smith, Russ Richardson (two) and Kevin Cassidy all getting on the scoresheet, and by the final gun the 11-1 rout was complete and the Pack were celebrating their fourth playoff in five years.

Aces Manager Graham Millward said:

"This was a routine if unspectacular performance from us tonight, Bradford made it tough for us for two periods but we showed our class and determination in the end to come though comfortably.

"We're still not playing to our full potential at the moment, but at least we've reached the playoffs and can now look forward to some more crunch matches in March and April where we will have to raise our game a notch or two."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.