A LOT of the Canadian guys thought they were back home last week.

Temperatures were freezing and there was snow everywhere . . . but we were only at the Chill Factor, that ski place near the Trafford Centre, for the BBC’s Children in Need appeal.

We went there on Friday to auction off the special shirts we wore for the Sheffield game. Our fans were great and we raised plenty of money for that good cause.

It was pretty cold in there but Josh Garbutt didn’t seem to mind and he kept going to the ski hut. He thought he was in Saskatchewan.

The temperature was a bit warmer on Sunday night in Altrincham in an amazing game against Belfast.

 We only had one game on the weekend and the boys were up for it but we did not get result we wanted.

Belfast have a great squad and we can’t take anything away from them. They pushed us right to the limit but losing with 23 seconds to go is inexcusable and everyone was really gutted.

Gut-wrencher

They were all over us in the last five minutes but that’s when you have to bear down on defence and make sure you come away with the point. To lose was a real gut-wrencher.

It was great to have Stephen Murphy back in goal. He stood on his head and made a lot of key saves and but for him the game would have been more in their favour.

It was also good to see Carl Graham getting some ice time. Tony Hand wants to play three lines and with Bruce Mulherin injured Carl came in.

He is one of the hardest workers on the team in practise.  He rides the pine a lot but he sits there and learns, so getting those shifts should be a confidence booster for him.

He was on my line and did a good job. We didn’t get scored on and I think he was on the ice for one of our goals.

The boys will be really pumped up when he scores. We are going to have a party if he scores a goal. One time in Newcastle we thought he got a goal and the whole bench erupted but it was Adam Walker who scored. No offence to Adam but we wanted Carl to score.

This weekend we have Hull at home on Saturday (6.30pm) and Edinburgh away on Sunday and there can be no excuses.

We have plenty of respect for both those teams but  anything less than four points it is not acceptable.

Winning

We have lost three in a row and that’s the biggest skid we’ve had all year. If you are near the bottom of the league you can get used to that but we are used to winning.

The fans have been buying raffle tickets over the last few weeks for a night out with our owner Neil Morris and myself.
Neil asked me what band I liked to listen too and jokingly I said Slipknot – a heavy metal band.

So he fixed up this raffle and we are going to the  MEN Arena with four of the fans.

I think of the two people who have won so far one is a 22-year-old girl and the other is a 70-year-old woman.

I just hope these fans don’t come away from this night out scared out of their minds.

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