Lancashire Hawks 4 Murrayfield 6

LANCASHIRE Hawks lost - well, it was weekend - to finish the scheduled ice hockey season on the bottom rung of the ladder.

A crowd of 850 watched Murrayfield Royals, so long in the Northern League lowest spot themselves, come and conquer at the Arena on Saturday.

Those same fans will be looking for more joy when the play-offs get under way tomorrow night.

Hawks squad, again savaged by injury problems and containing youngsters in their early teens, wasn't able to match Royals' extra power - the experienced Neil Smith proving the main difference with a hat-trick.

Hawks leaked two goals in the space of seven seconds early in the first period but rallied to take the second 3-2 and were very much in the game at 4-5 with nine minutes to play.

Scot Neil then had the final say with a late clincher to hand the unwanted wooden spoon to the Hawks.

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

Scoresheet: Jim Pennycook 1+1, Ismo Rokala 0+1, Bobby Haig 1+1, Ian Plews 1+1, Alan Hough 0+1, Tom Burridge 1+0, Tim Dempsey 0+1, Simon Mills 0+1.

Hawks are back in Arena action tomorrow night with the first play-off fixture at home to Telford Tigers (face-off 8pm).

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