Murrayfield Royals 4 Lancashire Hawks 6

ADRIAN Lomonaco kept his head on a night of chaos - and Lancashire Hawks started their ice hockey league campaign with a morale-boosting victory.

But it looked as though this would be the game that never was when the referees failed to show! The face-off was delayed for an hour until replacement officials from a Scottish junior league arrived to fill in.

But Hawks - with Canadian Lomonaco leading from the front - emerged triumphant in a real ding-dong battle.

Hawks led twice and trailed twice before two goals in the final five minutes secured success: "It was entertaining stuff - when we eventually got the fixture moving" said manager Mike Cockayne. "And we got the result we needed.

"The players showed good spirit and the ability to keep going right to the end.

"We have injury problems and few options open and knew what this was a big fixture for us. We deserved to win and it will give us heart."

Lomonaco scored an outstanding straight hat-trick as both sides enjoyed equal shares of possession and chances - the statistic showed the Royals to have out-shot by 33-28, but Cockayne's men had the cutting edge.

Murrayfield's early lead was cancelled out by Lomonaco, who repeated the feat again before edging Hawks ahead on 33 minutes. The Royals levelled only for flying Finn Mike Pynnonen to net his first goal for the Hawks. The home side rallied to 4-4, but the goal of the night put Hawks' noses in front again.

Bobby Haig's's neat stick work and through pass was brilliantly controlled and executed by Jeff Daniels and then, with the Royals going for bust, Tim Dempsey scored on an empty net with 16 seconds remaining.

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

Scoresheet: Mike Pynnonen 1+2, Jeff Daniels 1+2, Tim Dempsey 1+1, Bobby Haig 0+1, Lee Cowmeadow 0+2, Adrian Lomonaco 3+0.

On Saturday Hawks scored an emphatic 8-2 win over Altrincham in a challenge match at the Arena.

Hawks took the opportunity to blood three of the club's starlets, Westley Barnett, Brennan O'Connell and Wayne Slater - O'Connell was also taken to Scotland last night but didn't ice.

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