Belfast Giants’ destiny firmly in their own hands says captain Mark Cooper
Belfast Giants captain Mark Cooper believes that they have got their destiny this season firmly in their grasp.
With plenty more games to be played and Challenge Cup semi-finals games in February, he believes need to focus on just one goal at a time.
He said: “Sometimes when you are chasing a championships you have to hope for other teams to make slip ups or be beaten by others.
“The position we now have is that we are in full control of our destiny. We still have to play the teams that are chasing us a few more times before the end of the season.
“So we can separate ourselves even further over the next couple of weeks.
“But we need to take each game as it comes and not get too far ahead of ourselves. It's one goal at a time right now.
“We do have those big games against Nottingham in the Challenge Cup in February. We will be ready for them when that game comes around.”
Cooper says this has been the plan for the Giants right from the start of the season.
He explained: “We obviously game into this season with our eyes firmly on winning all those trophies from Sheffield that they stole from us last season.
“We felt it was an opportunity to for ourselves focus on the job at hand and last weekend’s wins were huge for us.
“We are where we want to be right now in the league. We have set ourselves up well for the remainder of the year as we chase down the last half of games.”
Reflecting on last weekend’s win against Cardiff, he said: “We played a really solid road game against Cardiff. We played simple hockey and didn’t give the Devils any chance of getting into the game. In the second period we were rewarded for the work we had put in.”