Blackburn Hawks Assistant Coach James Neil recaps the weekend action.

WE can look back on the weekend with a lot of pride and a lot of positives.

We lost 4-2 to Telford in the cup on Saturday but they are one of the strongest sides in our league and we matched them for the entire game.

Our plan was to come out of the traps quick and that worked really well, we went one up inside the first minute and led 2-1 after 10 minutes.

But they scored twice just before the end of the second period, with their third goal coming when a shot that was going well wide hit one of their players on the helmet and flew in. It was a complete fluke but one of those things.

That meant we had to chase the game a little bit and we got caught out when they scored a fourth but we can still be very pleased with the performance.

Telford will be in the top three of our league come the end of the season and after the leading trio I think it is a level playing field between most of the other clubs.

That was why Sunday’s away win at Whitley Bay was so crucial.

They hadn’t won a game but their rink is small and they have quite an intimidating crowd and it is never an easy place to go and play.

We arrived late because of traffic and started slowly but we dominated the last two periods and played some good hockey.

We scored four times in five minutes in the final period and it was a real positive to see take our chances.

We had Adam Barnes back in the team and he scored a hat-trick and that is what we have been missing so far this season, someone to put the puck in the net. It showed against Telford on Saturday as their forward line took their chances.

Adam has been playing with Manchester Storm in the past few weeks but has not had much ice time so we were able to take him and he played really well.

I think he would like to play hockey so hopefully we can call on him a bit more moving forward.

We have Solihull at home this Sunday in the league.

It is a rare single game weekend for us so we will be doing our best to get the win and it is a game I expect us to win.

If we play like we did last weekend then I am confident we can get the right result.