After having a day off to rest the legs and coming from a well deserved win against rivals Greece, our Boys in Green now must look ahead to their match versus host team Turkey tomorrow, Wednesday 18th of April 2012. Puck drops at 3 pm Irish time.
Without a doubt, this will be one of the toughest games that Ireland will play in their campaign at the 2012 IIHF World Championship Division III in Erzurum, Turkey.
It’s the host team, home ice advantage and home supporters. A perfect platform for the Turkish side. A daunting task it must be for a team to play in an arena where you have over 1,000 home fans cheering on your opponents. It sure is, there is no question about that, any player will tell you that.
But our Boys in Green always play with pride, they play with their hearts. That earns respect.
Monday was a huge step in the right direction. Hopefully our boys can keep building on their success and learning from their mistakes as they go. We sense a huge performance from the Boys in Green is on the way.
Turkey go into this game feeling comfortable, they sit top of the championship table at the moment, followed by PRK Korea. They will be looking to win against this Irish side in an effort to secure a gold medal and promotion to the Division II next year, all on home ice, no better way to win a tournament. The green machine have a tough task in hand, we accept that.
But since game one, we have improved. Adam Jackson-Wyatt, Gareth Martin and Gareth Roberts are proving to be a line to reckon with. Solid performances from the ‘Stevens’ , Adams, Balmer & Ewen are keeping the puck out of site. Hamill and O’ Driscoll are also working the puck well with the support of the whole team.
Both Bickerstaff & Pepper have show that either can perform well in guarding the Irish net. Coach Kenny Redmond will make his choice of starting keeper tomorrow and he has a solid selection to choose from. It’s worth noting that these two players are very young but have an abundance of talent within them, definitely rising stars in Irish ice hockey.
Speaking from Turkey today, Head coach Kenny Redmond said ‘We regrouped and we worked on correcting simple mistakes and we believe in ourselves’.
‘This game is massive for us. If we win this game against Turkey and beat Mongolia, we play Korea for gold. It’s a huge game. But we remain positive as a whole and we build on our performance, as we’ve done so since last week’, Kenny added.
Who knows what can happen on any given day. Positive thinking is the first step. As I have said earlier in the week, if you stop dreaming, you stop living.
Follow the live scores for all matches on www.iihf.com. Men’s Division III. Statistics are available at http://www.iihf.com/channels1112/wm-iii/statistics.html
Also catch us on twitter: @IIHA & @IIHFScores, #TeamIreland and the IIHA’s FaceBook page.
Get Behind The Team – Come On The Boys In Green !