News Report

Cliffs Statement

This season will be Cliff's last for the Chieftains

• admin
• 19 February 2026

With a heavy heart the time has come to tell everyone that at the end of the 2025/26 season my time coaching the Chieftains will draw to a close.  There is no secrets, issues or hidden agendas, it’s just that I feel the time is right to stop spending half of my week on the M1 and M25 and waking up tired more days a week than I don’t! It’s been a great (nearly) 3 years and I have met and worked with people here who I will never lose touch with and had a great time doing it.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my nearly 3 seasons at the Chieftains, there’s been some highs and lows as every team experiences every season, but overall I will only look at it as a great period of my life.  In my time at the club we’ve won 2 trophies and are still in the hunt for a couple more this season, which we are all fully focussed on, it would definitely be good to go out with a bang and win at least one more before I disappear from the Riverside (before I return as a fan!)

I’m sure the time for thanking everyone properly will come when the time is right but I would just like to thank Del and Karen for everything they have done for me and for bringing me to this great club at a time in my life when I thought I might never love the game or step on a bench again, it was definitely the right decision for me to say yes and I couldn’t be happier now that I did.

In the meantime I am still fully committed to the club, the boys and the job until the very last moments of this season, let’s hope that’s later rather than sooner!

See you at the rink,

Cliff.