Hull Seahawks coach Matty Davies discusses changes made to the roster in the close season and his expectations for the 2024-25 NIHL National campaign
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00:00Do you feel you've got a good mix and do you feel that you have stepped up from last season despite losing, as everyone knows, two massive parts of last season's team in Declan Barmer and Brock Bartholomew?
00:18Yeah, I think it's always tough when you sort of have a real identity in a team one year and that's the challenge, right, to obviously keep improving. I think we've got better this year, yeah, I think we've got obviously a lot deeper in quality.
00:38And, you know, like I said before, when you lose someone like Brock and Dec we've lost now, you're taking out two of the best team men in the league, let's be honest, and anyone would not want to lose them players.
00:52Brock, a little bit different just because, look, it's imports, you can always end up losing them players and I think taking Brock last year really gave us sort of an identity in our team that we played very offensive, especially when he was on the ice and Dec was on the ice with him.
01:11And, you know, we generally really dominated teams when that line was out there and a lot of that was due to him. And I think, you know, I think what you found, I think we found this year that a lot of teams are now going with D-men on, you know, import D-men, which, you know, I think Brock probably played a big part of that.
01:29And I felt like, look, we just had to, we had to change a little bit. I think where we did sort of fall down a little bit or last year when we didn't quite get there in the end, I think we sort of relied a heavily amount on them too.
01:45And that didn't quite, you know, stand us in good stead going towards the end just when people are tired and just fatigue just got us in the end with them two mainly and sort of just not having enough sort of in quality coming behind it. And I think that didn't help.
02:02So this year was a case that I was always going to go with a three import forwards just because I knew we had Dave coming in, which is obviously a massive, you know, signing for us. And that does change sort of the dynamic of the team in a sense, just because he is a different player to what Brock is. And I think you have to sort of evolve a little bit.
02:27And sort of like I said before, you know, it does just change things. And where we are as a team, I felt like we needed more depth in forward, you know, just through the lines. I felt like we just sort of, we didn't quite have that quality last year. And I felt like we just lost games at times just through that mainly against Leeds and MK. And yeah, and I think we just, we probably needed to just, you know, bolster that a little bit, which was a part of obviously the three forward imports, but also, you know, bringing in, you know,
02:55the Huey signing, I think was big for that. And obviously spare, which, you know, I've said it this year already, but that third line that I've got with spare, you know, Brutes and DJ have been honestly unreal. And I think as a third line, you know, that's as good as you're going to get.
03:11Do you feel then, talking like you have just about the different personnel that you've got, there's perhaps a better balance throughout the roster?
03:17Yeah, I think that's what we needed.
03:19Both top front end and back end?
03:21Yeah, I think that's what we needed. We just needed a better sort of, you know, just overall, you know, balance within the team and the quality going through the team needed to just go up a notch.