Murrayfield Racers retain Stuart Robertson Cup after a bad-tempered final

Six players receive fighting penalties but Racers rejoice

Murrayfield Racers, cheered on by supporters, proudly display the trophy

Murrayfield Racers have won the first trophy of the Scottish National League ice-hockey season, successfully defending the Stuart Robertson Cup by rounding off an emphatic 14-6 aggregate win with a 10-4 defeat of Dundee Comets in a bad tempered second-leg on home ice last night.

Racers never looked like allowing Comets to eat into Saturday’s 4-2 lead following the first-leg at Dundee Ice Arena, and were 2-0 up on the night within seven minutes, Murrayfield captain Joel Gautschi with both goals. Murrayfield defenceman Rihards Grigors scored the home side’s third before Comets got on the board in the 11th minute through Rob Brown.

The closest the visitors came to mounting a fightback was when Comets player-coach John Dolan made it 3-2 on the night, just 30 seconds into the second period. Ross Borwick had made it 4-2 to the home side with a power-play marker, before, with five minutes of the second period to play, two goals 60 seconds apart from Callum Boyd and Liam Danskin killed the tie, giving Murrayfield a six-goal aggregate lead with 20 minutes to play.

Comets did not go down without a fight, in fact there were three in a physical third period in which Racers’ Boyd, Grigors, and Borwick, plus Comets’ Billy Hogg, Brown and Drew Rumgay all picked up fighting penalties.

Racers’ third-period goals came from Gautschi (2), Archie Holmes and Steven Clark, all after Comets had made it 6-4 with goals from Ben Edmonds and Dolan.

Murrayfield defenceman, Marty Simpson was delighted to pick up his first trophy as a Racer after signing for the club this season and said: “This is really good, it’s great to pick us some silverware, but we need to keep pushing and improving for the rest of the season.

“We’ve got some hard games ahead (against Solway Sharks in both the Scottish National League and semi-final of the National Ice Hockey League North Cup). If we can win those that will really show what type of team we have here, so we all need to keep working hard.”

Racers and Comets face-off against each other again on league business at Murrayfield on Hogmanay, asked if things will settle down after an ill disciplined end to tonight’s game, Simpson continued: “To be honest I don’t think so, there’s a lot of bad blood this season between the two teams, we’ll just have to wait and see.”