Lancashire Hawks 4 Paisley Pirates 10

LANCASHIRE Hawks' rag-tag squad battled against both injury and the visiting Paisley Pirates at the Blackburn Arena last night..but found themselves well out of their depth as early as the first period, taking the full brunt of the Pirates' broadside.

Hawks conceded five goals within 20 minutes before buckling down in the remaining two periods. With Hawks in the midst of an injury nightmare they found their limited resources severely stretched - and Paisley's experienced squad eventually won out over Hawks' fighting spirit at the buzzer.

But Hawks threw away a great chance to reduce the deficit in the second period with a massive five minute powerplay bringing just a solitary goal.

Pirates player-coach Paul Hand received a five minute game penalty for roughing, and to add insult to injury the ref added on two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct before Barry Hollyhead reduced it to five for tripping.

But still Hawks failed to capitalise.

Netminder Hollyhead was peppered with a massive 51 shots on goal, 14-year-old Wesley Fawthrop successfully seeing off a late attack.

Young starlet Danny Mackriel won the man of the match with a superb effort in the third period, darting past three players to bag a stunning solo goal, but it was too little, too late.

Scoresheet: Danny Mackriel 1+0, Tim Dempsey 0+3, Simon Mills 1+0, Tom Burridge 0+2, Ismo Rokala 2+1, Alan Hough 0+1.

Period scores: 0-5, 3-3, 1-2.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.