In many respects, tonight’s road win over Thunder followed a very similar theme to Saturday’s except for a devastating little acceleration late in the middle period. What made tonight’s performance a little more acceptable was that, this time, the onus was on Thunder to make all the moves and Phantoms were quite at liberty to focus on shutting them down late in the game.
There had been overnight talk of bounties on the heads of certain Phantoms players and there were certainly plenty of lively verbal exchanges early on along with a fair helping of plexi-bending hits as Thunder set out to test the resolve of their opponents but an early strike from James Ferrara showed that it would take more than that to turn this one around. Ales Padelek then doubled Phantoms lead, taking a behind the net feed and one timing it through Annetts with pure venom and with Tom Carlon focused more on trying to haul down Will Weldon after the Phantoms player had left him floundering in the corner, James White was left wide open in front to fire home a third with 14:19 on the clock.
The all action Grant McPherson somehow bundled home a loose puck to pull one back for Thunder just before the break but Phantoms ended the first two ahead and five ahead on aggregate. The game threatened to boil over on the buzzer as frustrated Thunder players massed in front of the Phantoms bench but the snarls from the home players were simply met by laughter from the Phantoms who knew the game was now safe.
As with Saturday night’s game, Phantoms seemed quite prepared to lean back on the ropes in the second, leaving Thunder to exercise Euan King with mainly long distance and fairly harmless shots but they did breach the Phantoms defences just past the game’s midpoint and their celebrations suggested they were ready to launch a real onslaught. Those celebrations were clearly noted by Phantoms who immediately came off the ropes to destroy Thunder with three goals in just over four minutes.
Leigh Jamieson crashed home from right in front of Annetts, Ales Padelek squirted one through Annetts five hole from the blue line and Scott Robson finished off the best goal of the night, trailing into big space to convert after good work from Weldon and Pollard.
With less than a minute left on the period, Thunder saw their chance to unload some of their frustrations when a scramble in front of their goal resulted in Rob Ferrara being floored by a punch from Carlon that he never saw coming. The Phantoms man jumped to his feet and tried to plough through the crowd for revenge while the ever excitable Grant McPherson started to flail like a squid on crack before Scott Robson tied him up, put him down and sat on him until things had calmed down !
Period three was classic Slava Koulikov road game “we have – we hold” gameplay as Phantoms sat three at the back and showed little or no interest in doing anything more than wrapping up the opposition, putting them in a box and sitting on the lid ….. a task they executed to perfection and even found time to grab a late goal when Nathan Salem drove out from behind to beat Annetts at the near post for 7-2 and 11-3 on aggregate.
Phantoms man of the match was, once again, captain James Ferrara who despite being targeted throughout by Thunder’s antagonists was involved in everything, never shied away and quite simply led by example from start to finish.
So …… job done and its on to a huge semi-final showdown with the league’s #1 form team Swindon Wildcats next weekend. Make no mistake about it, Phantoms will need to move up a level in performance from this weekend but whereas they were less than convincing on Saturday, tonight they were evidently in control throughout and clearly had gears to move through whenever they felt the need. Next week they will need those higher gears and they will need to replicate the intensity and tempo they showed against Bison recently but the stakes could not be higher and surely that will be all we need to take us through to Coventry !
Game stats HERE