SUNDAY, February 8 Telford Ice Rink face off 5.30pm Telford Titans 6 - 0 Manchester Phoenix ENL. This game would decide whether the Phoenix would be in the frame for the league championship or whether the Titans would run free at the head of the table.

A large crowd had gathered in the Telford rink, including a sizeable contingent of Phoenix supporters, to see the outcome.

After five minutes Telford had scored three unanswered goals and Manchester, looking a little dazed, took too long to pull themselves together to get back into the game.

Titans breezed into a three-goal lead and after just 10 seconds the Phoenix incurred a penalty for delay of game after a defenceman over embellished the goalframe being off its moorings.

With the visitors clearly rattled by the decision, Titans’ Kevin Parton collected an errant clearance and rifled a shot from the slot with just 39 seconds played.

Manchester began to settle, but two costly turnovers led to two unassisted goals whistling past Benn Schofield in the Phoenix net.

The first came from Jared Owen in the fifth minute pouncing on a poor clearance to score and barely 30 seconds later, Karol Jets was able to pick his spot for a rapid-fire 3-0 lead.

The Phoenix failed to recover from this point and Jets and Owen combined in the ninth minute for Jets’ second marker, and the writing really was on the wall.

When Owen scored his own second goal three minutes later to complete a 5-0 period, Phoenix coach Mark Hobson decided that Benn Schofield had seen enough and Tom McDonald replaced him in goal.

This seemed to be the wake-up call that Manchester needed. They buckled down, tightened up the defence with McDonald amazingly only facing one shot in the nine minutes to the first interval.

There was no let up by the dominant Telford team in the second period as they outshot the Phoenix 18-9 through the second twenty minutes.

McDonald was beaten just the once in the 27th minute as Matt Allan added his name to the Titans scorers.

Given the past history of the games between the two teams, there was remarkably little activity in the penalty boxes. The teams incurred just four minor penalties each through the first 40 minutes of play.

The third period was largely the Titans retaining what they had, without risking the Phoenix spoiling their net-minder’s – Daniel Brittle - shut-out.

The Phoenix pressure, while never really troubling Brittle did see Telford give up eight minutes of minor penalties, including a long 5-on-3 powerplay that Manchester failed to capitalise on.

The game ended with a delighted Telford team deservedly getting the man of the match award for an outstanding team effort.

A Phoenix official said: “We keep giving the opposition the first 10 minutes of the game. With some teams we’ve been able to hold them and then come back and dominate. That’s not possible with a team like Telford, they’ll make you pay for any lack in concentration. And they did.

“Somehow, we didn’t seem to have the collective heart for the game. And that is curious given the outcome would decide the league championship. Congratulations to Telford, they put in an excellent team performance and never looked in any danger. Jared Owen was outstanding, plus Daniel Brittle was unbeatable in nets.”

Man of the match for Phoenix: Tom King Period cores: 5–0, 1–0, 0-0 Shots on goal: (Shots on Phoenix first) total: 33–35 Phoenix stats: Nets: Benn Schofield 13/5 (61.54 per cent) Tom MacDonald 22/1 (95.45 per cent)