WIDNES Wild’s 4-2 defeat at Nottingham Lions means that they are now eight points behind Laidler Conference league leaders Blackburn Eagles.

Although they do have games in hand over all the teams above them, it has given their title challenge a bit of a battering.

They will have the chance to start bridging that gap this weekend when they play the Eagles away at the Silver Blades Arena in Blackburn on Saturday before playing host to the league’s bottom club Coventry Blaze at home at Silver Blades Widnes on Sunday, 4 December, in a 5.30pm face off.

They can draw some positives from the defeat against the Lions.

The Wild had actually led for most of the game until seeing all their hard work undone in a disastrous last five minutes in the Lace City which, along with other unfavourable results around the league, saw them drop down to fifth place in the table.

In contrast to recent weeks where the Wild had been having trouble finding the back of the net, this time around they got off to a dream start, as defenceman Andrew Turner fired them into the lead after just four minutes of play.

The lead lasted just over five minutes until Lions’ Cameron Pywell put the hosts back on level terms but the Wild dug deep and were back in front again some 4 minutes later after Will Barron converted a pass from Turner.

The score remained 1-2 at the first break and – somewhat mystifyingly – was still 1-2 at the second break despite the Wild throwing everything but the kitchen sink a the Lion’s goal during that period, out-shooting the Lions by two to one.

In view of how close this game was, there were a surprisingly few penalties for either side.

However it was during a Lions powerplay for a Wild tripping penalty that Nottingham levelled the scores with 10 minutes left to play.

Worse was to come five minutes later when the Lions intercepted the puck in centre ice and Pywell charged down to score his second goal of the game and put the home side ahead for the first time of the night.

Widnes upped the pressure in an attempt to try and salvage something from the game and the Lions were forced into taking a couple of late penalties. With just one minute left to go and Widnes on a 5 on 3 powerplay, they pulled netminder Matt Croyle in favour of an extra attacker.

Unfortunately, the tactic failed as Nottingham cleared the puck and scored in the empty net to finish the game with a 4-2 victory.

Having started the day in fourth place with the incentive of climbing to 3rd with a defeat of the Lions, the Wild instead found themselves dumped down to fifth place after north west rivals Altrincham Aces beat Bradford Bulldogs 6-3 to leapfrog them.

The Widnes Wild women’s team picked up their second win in succession with a tense and hard fought 6-4 victory over Kingston Diamonds in the Women’s Premier League at Silver Blades Widnes on Sunday.

Coming off the back of a draw and a win in their two previous home games, the Wild women were keen to extend their unbeaten run and were quickest out of the blocks.