That’s it, the end of week 11 means we have our first trophy winner of the season! The image on the story is a spoiler to those who haven’t seen that “The Kessel Run” managed by GM Paul Edwards are the 2023/24 FHL UK Cup Winners. A trophy, FHL UK branded hat and puck will be on its way to you shortly.
Congratulations to the team and GM who have won nine straight knockout fixtures to claim the title with a 297-255.5 points win over Mark Taylor’s “Dyson’s Destroyers”. We released our final preview last week so let’s see if the predictions were correct.
GM Mark Taylor made a great move in goal by bringing in Kevin Carr for Evan Weninger for the cup final. Weninger only scored the three points for “The Kessel Run” while Carr scored 20.9 points. However Matt Greenfield’s 51 points for “The Kessel Run” brought them back into the game and to only trail by 4.5 points on the goalie scores.
It was advantage to “The Kessel Run” on defence though as they scored 86 points with the Cardiff players being a big factor. Marcus Crawford was brought in for Ben O’Connor and scored 48 points on his own while the slumping Cody Donaghey and River Rymsha were held scoreless for the week for “Dyson’s Destroyers”. They did pick up 30 unexpected points from Sheffield’s Sam Jones and a solid 23 from Drydn Dow but this is only a couple of more more than Crawford on his own. “The Kessel Run” then also picked up 23 points from Brady Norrish and 15 points from Reece Kelly to jump into the lead.
Up front both teams went for Cole Sanford as captain as Cardiff were playing three times and this proved to be a solid choice as he scored 58 points for the week. Both teams then also had good production from their Sheffield forwards with Mikko Juusola and Patrick Watling scoring 34 and 38 points respectively. “The Kessel Run” also traded in Ryan Valentini from the Dundee Stars and he had a good week with 27 points, however “Dyson’s Destroyers” traded in Lewis Hook (18 points) and Spencer Naas (17 points) which increased the teams total from Matt Alvaro and JD Dudek. Overall not much to choose between the two sides in the forward scores so it looks like the tie was decided on defence scoring, and in particular Marcus Crawford.
The FHL UK media team managed to speak to our winning GM Paul Edwards earlier today to get his thoughts on the win –
Q – Congratulations Paul on the cup win, how does it feel?
A – Thanks, it feels great. I’ve been playing the FHL UK game since it’s first season back in 2018/19 and it’s nice to actually win something at last. Especially as there are so many teams in it this year, I thought I’d have one bad week and get knocked out.
Q – That’s right, with nine knockout cup rounds to get through did you make any specific changes for the cup?
A – To be honest I didn’t make any major changes to begin with and just tried to bring in players who looked like they were starting to hit form. It was only when I got to the last few rounds that I made more changes and ended up using all my remaining trades for the final.
Q – Your trade to bring in Crawford for the final probably made the difference so without giving away any secrets, what do you base your trading activity on?
A – I tended to just follow the form players and look at the schedule. The weekly updates you put on the site are really useful as I can see who has been doing well over the last few weeks and then also which teams are playing more in the upcoming week. I did drop Crawford for O’Connor when I seen Cardiff were playing in Europe and Guildford had three games in a week, then for the final Cardiff were playing three times, so I switched them back.
Q – I can see you are doing well in the league standings as well, are you thinking about a league and cup double?
A – There’s still a long way to go in that and I’ve used up all my trades already so I’ll just have to hope the current roster can keep it close for now. I’m in a couple of mini leagues with friends and family, so I’ll just hope to win those at the end of the season while it is good for bragging rights
Q – Finally, I guess you follow the Elite League closely, who is your pick to win the Elite League this year?
A – Yeah I’ve been a fan since the 1990’s so follow it as much as I can and looking at the scores each week definitely helps when selecting your team. Don’t think you can look passed Sheffield and Cardiff, both have really solid goalies so they have a chance in every game. If I had to pick one I’d go for Sheffield as they seem to have 4 forward lines who can all score and they’ve got a lot of experience in defence. As they share the scoring out one or two injuries wouldn’t potentially hurt them as much as other teams. Thanks also for running the game over the last few years, really enjoyed following the scores over the weekend when you have a few players in every game.
