Castlereagh Knights 10 Hawks 3

Hawks 3 Paisley Pirates 8 BLACKBURN Hawks owe their long-suffering fans an apology.

Five straight defeats in the Northern Premier League leaves Hawks odds on to finish rock bottom. Excuses over illness or injury carry little weight - the situation is grim in the extreme.

We are talking about a club in crisis. Stand-in skipper Bobby Haig, both a trier and an optimist, is struggling to put a finger on the root cause. But Haig, leading from the front in the absence of Paul Fleury, refused to hide from his responsibilities last night.

"We have got ourselves in a right hole and we have to dig ourselves out - no one else is going to do it for us. Things will have to change, we can't keep on letting ourselves down or, more importantly, letting our fans down. "They keep turning out week in and week out to support us and we are giving them nothing in return. I feel for them, but our confidence is at a low ebb right now."

Hawks have won only once in the NPL since the end of October and, for the second successive weekend, they slumped to a double defeat disaster.

A gruelling 23-hour away day in Belfast on Saturday resulted in the first part of the catastrophe and, last night, it was little better in terms of scoreline, but a degree better in terms of performance. Castlereagh were three up before Hawks knew the game had started on Saturday and the local side never recovered any sort of composure losing the three periods 4-1, 4-1 and 2-1.

Ismo Rokala was the only player to hit anything like form, scoring twice in a scoresheet reading: Rokala 2+0, Simon Mills 0+1, Tom Burridge 1+0, Bobby Haig 0+1, Billy Price 0+1, Tim Dempsey 0+1, Lee Colclough 0+1.

Last night - with the attendance figure higher than the previous week - Hawks lost the first period 0-3 and the second 1-4 before getting a certain level of respectability by taking the third 2-1.

From a home viewpoint the game will be remembered only for an outstanding goal from Alan Hough, who seemed to skate through at least a trio of challenges before shooting home from an acute angle.

Scoresheet: Patrik Ferlander 1+0, Tom Burridge 1+0, Alan Hough 1+0, Simon Mills 0+1, Lee Colclough 0+1.

Hawks were missing both Fleury and Neil Abel through illness and injury respectively.

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