Leeds Knights - Road to second league title strewn with potholes as Knights get ready to ‘do it tough’

If their second-tier rivals could pick the hardest four games for the Knights to play over the next nine days, they would probably have come up with exactly what is in store for Ryan Aldridge and his players.

Starting tonight, comes a swift rematch with Swindon Wildcats. Related by ownership they may be but there is little love lost between the two whenever they get together on the ice - as evidenced by Sunday’s 9-7 goal-fest in Leeds and the 1-0 win enjoyed by Aaron nell’s team at The Link Centre last month.

Throw in a weekend double-header against Yorkshire rivals Hull Seahawks and you get an idea of how tough the next 72 hours are going to be for the defending champions.

Then, just for good measure, why not send the Knights down the motorway to Milton Keynes Lightning the following Saturday, where they will come face to face with the only team who can realistically overtake them for the coveted regular season crown.

Eight points clear at the top and with a game in hand on the Lightning the Knights may be in a league they have led for the vast majority of the season but in the words of some song or other, noone said it was going to be easy.

Some Knights’ fans may already be celebrating a second successive crown, but you only have to cast your mind back to the National Cup semi-final against the Seahawks to realise how quickly things can turn.

Head coach Aldridge, for one, is taking nothing for granted.

“We’ve got a very hard run-in,” he said ahead of Friday’s trip to Wiltshire. “And that’s the thing - people have been saying for weeks, it’s ours, that it’s in the bag - it’s not. It’s a long way off still and there is still a lot of hockey to be played.

“This weekend is a tough weekend, we struggle against Swindon, we struggle against Hull and we’ve got them three games in a row and then we’ve got another tough weekend the weekend after.

“So we really do have to take things a game at a time - we didn’t play our best at the weekend, Swindon probably didn’t play their best, it was a very strange game, it was a physical game and I was just happy to get the points - especially against a team like Swindon.

“Friday night will be no different I guess.”

Of course, it could all go according ‘to plan’ over the coming three days. Leeds could quite conceivably win all three games, while Milton Keynes take nothing from their double-header against a Bees team still desperately trying to make the post-season.

If that happens, it will literally be game over and the Knights can move on to start planning on how to retain their play-off crown, too.