Murrayfield Racers aim to go whole season unbeaten in the SNL

Aaron Roberston scores for Racers. Picture: Ian Coyle

Racers were heavy favourites before the game against third-from-bottom Stingrays and led 4-0 inside five minutes.

Robertson said: “Those kind of games can go one of two ways, when you score five goals in five minutes it’s easy to drop the pace, but all game we did a good job of making sure we were doing the right things and not taking anything for granted.”

The early goals came from Martin Cingel, Robertson and a double from Joel Gautschi. The fast start prompted Racers’ Director of Hockey, Tony Hand, to call a time-out and replace starting goalie Mark McGill with regular Racers under-20 stopper Andrew Wright.

After a shaky start, Stingrays net-minder Daniel Morris found his feet and made several good saves although Robertson’s second goal, and a Lewis Young marker, had Racers leading 6-0 after 20 minutes.

Despite the visitors scoring a short-handed goal from Gordon Horne just six seconds into the second period, and a second goal from Stephen Adams, Racers continued to dominate, out-shooting Stingrays 25 to five and stretching their lead to 11-2, goals coming from Cingel, Callum Boyd, first strikes of the season for blue-liners Craig Main and Dean Walker, plus a Ross Borwick power-play goal as Hand gave plenty of ice time to his entire squad.

The third period was uneventful before Racers exploded for four goals in the final minutes through Robertson on the power-play, before the same player – as if to emphasise the gap in quality between the sides – went end-to-end whilst Racers had two men sitting in the penalty-box to score a lovely short-handed fourth. Young, and Gautschi with his hat-trick, completed the scoring.

Racers head into Christmas unbeaten in all SNL competitions, and Robertson continued: “When we have our full team rolling like that we can give anyone a proper game. If we can keep clear of injuries we can definitely keep this up and hopefully go the whole season undefeated, we’ll see how we go.”