Warwick 1 were celebrating on Sunday, as they won two out of three games at the Midlands League Play-offs to seal a place at the national finals.

By virtue of our 5th-place finish in Division One courtesy of two victories over Spalding Lion, we qualified for the play-offs along with 4th-placed Oxford and the top two from Division Two, Wigan Devils and Peterborough Falcons.

Two players, Dennis and Aidan, were promoted from the 2s to make their 1s debuts in the matches, and both came to play a pivotal role in helping us through.

Warwick 3-5 Oxford

The opening game of the day promised to be the toughest: Oxford had beaten us twice in the league, including a 10-1 scoreline last time out.

The first period offered a similar test, but we stood up to the challenge a little better, going in 2-0 down at the break.

We conceded a third early on in the second period, but weren’t prepared to lie down like last time, as we responded with two excellent goals.

First, Mark scored a trademark goal when he burst forward and found the goal, before Rob finished off a chance created by our newest forward, and suffice to say that Aidan was thrilled with his assist.

Spurred on by the prospect of a comeback, Warwick continued to pepper shots at Oxford’s goal throughout the remainder of the second period and the vast majority of the third, but to no avail.

Then, with only two minutes left, we took the risk of bringing Phil off to try to outnumber our opponents. Sadly, it didn’t quite pay off, and we let two more goals past us to seal the game.

There was still time for Niklas to score a fine individual goal to narrow the margin of the defeat, which was no less than the team’s performance deserved.

We were naturally disappointed to have lost our first game, but the group sensed that the manner of the game meant brighter things were to come.

Warwick 5-3 Falcons

Next up were the runners-up of Division Two, Peterborough Falcons, who were also smarting from a narrow defeat in their first match: a 5-4 reverse against Wigan Devils.

Once again we left ourselves with work to do by conceding the first goal of the game, but drew level just before the end of the first period when Mark and Rob were given the freedom of the rink for the latter to score.

Rob scored another early on the second period to give us our first lead of the day, before Rei made it 3-1 with a well-taken penalty shot.

Just moments later, however, Falcons earned a penalty of their own when Dave was adjudged to have checked his opponent, but Phil made an excellent save to maintain our two-goal lead.

We defended the resulting powerplay well, but conceded yet another penalty immediately afterwards, and Phil wasn’t able to repeat his heroics. Thus the score stood at 3-2 to Warwick at the end of the second period.

In remarkably similar fashion to our previous match, the score stayed at 3-2 for almost the entirety of the final period, before Niklas scored another great effort to give us a little more comfort.

That comfort proved to be short-lived, as Falcons pulled it back to 4-3 and were denied an equaliser just seconds later by the referees calling it back for an earlier foul.

Rei then made the most of our numerical advantage to put the icing on the cake in a solid, if slightly nervy, 5-3 win, meaning a place at Nationals would be riding on our final match.

Warwick 6-3 Wigan Devils

With both sides having beaten Falcons and lost to Oxford, everything came down to the last game of the day between Warwick and the Division Two champions.

Yet again, we failed to start off well, going 1-0 down early on, but Rei equalised soon afterwards, and a tightly-fought contest saw no more goals before the end of the first period. Warwick were dominating and creating chances but couldn’t quite find the finish our play deserved.

Devils punished us by retaking the lead early in the second period, and held onto it until just before the whistle blew for the period’s end.

Then came the dramatic turnaround, and the moment that caused shockwaves to reverberate around the floorball world. Aidan scored.

Rob returned the favour paid to him by Aidan in the Oxford match, and our Coventry representative sent us wild by finishing off with aplomb to bring the score back to 2-2.

There was still time for Rei to score immediately from the resulting face-off to make our celebrations all the more emphatic as the second period ended 3-2.

Devils pegged us back to 3-3 within seconds of the restart, which led to an anxious few minutes before Dave restored our lead with a backhand finish that typifies his goalscoring this season.

It proved to be the goal that sent Warwick to Nationals, as the only further additions to the scoresheet came courtesy of a pair of goals from Rei.

When the final whistle blew, drawing our 6-3 triumph to a close, the team were sent into raptures, and the celebrations that ensued were fitting of the glory of the day. There was still time in the evening for a curry at Ali’s Golden as we toasted our success.

And so we head to Nationals on 10-11 May with our heads held very high – let’s bring those same energy levels to Birmingham again to do Warwick Floorball Club proud!