Streatham Redskins head coach Barry Spours is under no illusion about the importance of Sunday's clash with Slough Jets after another defeat yesterday.

Redskins unveiled a new home jersey but it failed to inspire a turnaround in fortunes as they lost 7-3 at Streatham Ice Arena to Wightlink Raiders, despite being 2-2 at one point before a lapse in concentration saw the team from the Isle of Wight score twice in a minute.

It was Redskins fifth defeat from seven games and left them second-bottom, three points behind Sunday's opponents Slough, who themselves haven't won in seven games "Things are slowly coming together for us and the game against Slough next week is massive for us now," said Spours, who side drew 3-3 with Slough when they met last month.

"We need to start picking up more points and that is exactly what we intend to do.

"We knew Wightlink would be a tough game.

"When we pulled it back to 2-2 and the crowd began making noise I really thought we might push on, but we let them back into it and they have the players capable of punishing you if you give them the time and space."

As well as the new jersey, Streatham has summer signing Norm Pinnington appearing at home for the first time and he slotted straight on to the Redskins first line alongside Russ Stevens and Peter Molnar.

The game could not have started any better for the Redskins as they took the lead within two minutes.

A long pass from Chris Fox found the stick of Chris Rasmussen and his shot evaded Wightlink goalie Liam McAllister to give the home crowd hope of better things to come.

Instead of inspiring the Redskins, the early goal seemed to relax them too much and shortly afterwards, Raiders import Joe Rand waltzed past three Streatham players before turning goalie Shane Kemp inside out with a lovely deke before slotting the puck into the net.

Streatham had a good chance to score minutes later as a long pass from David Carr was picked up by Peter Molnar and his wrist shot struck the cross bar and bounced clear to the relief of the visitors.

Wightlink took the initiative and took the lead when a pass from behind the net by Arran Strawson found Kieran Annis in the slot and his wrist shot nestled into the corner of the net to make it 2-1 with two minutes remaining in the first period.

The second period started brightly for the Redskins again as the home side’s two man fore-check began to cause Wightlink problems.

Streatham got their reward with four minutes gone when Tomas Valko passed across the slot to the on skating Stevie Balmer and the Irish international lasered a slap shot in off the post to spark celebrations on the bench.

Sadly for the home side, they switched off again following scoring and a mix up in the Redskins defensive zone left Richard Facey all alone in front of net and he received the puck from Rand on the left wing to slot past Kemp.

Wightlink scored again just thirty seconds later to make it 4-2 courtesy of a Jeremy Cornish goal and then added two more goals by the end of the period thanks to Facey and a looping shot from Damon Larter, giving the visitors a 6-2 lead.

Matters got worse for the Redskins when Tomas Valko attempted to lift Dominic Hopkins stick with his own and ended up catching the big Raiders defenseman in the face. With the bloodied Hopkins laid out on the ice, the referee had no option but to send Valko to the showers with a five plus match penalty.

Streatham started the third period killing a five minute penalty and did this with ease. Shortly afterwards however, a sloppy line change on an icing call saw the Raiders get another power play and this time they made no mistake as Rand got his second of the night.

At 7-2 down Streatham did not give up hope and managed to pull back a further goal on a rare powerplay, as Peter Molnar and Dave Carr exchanged passes deep in the zone and Molnar squeezed his wrist shot past McAllister to score.