Matty Davies preparing to face off for one last time with Hull Seahawks before heading off into retirement

The 32-year-old Hull Seahawks player-coach will strap them on for one last time as he bows out after a distinguished 16-year senior career, the majority of it in his hometown.

He will face-off against former club Leeds Knights on Wednesday night (face-off 7pm).

An ongoing knee injury is why Davies is being forced to call time but, typically, he is bowing out on his own terms, on home ice, against a former team and with the team he helped launch and put on the ice amid a hectic summer last year.

"I’ve known it’s been coming for a while,” said Davies, who fulfilled his wish to play for the Seahawks when making his debut against Yorkshire rivals Sheffield Steeldogs earlier this month.

“To be honest, if I hadn’t been doing this whole thing with the Seahawks and taken on the coaching, I would probably have packed up anyway.

"It’s been a long career and I’ve loved every minute of it. It’s going to be an emotional night on Wednesday and it would be nice to see as many people there as possible.

"I’ve known in my head for a while that my playing days were done. I haven’t come to terms with it quite just yet and it probably won’t sink in properly until Wednesday.

"But I’ve got to be realistic. I could go out there and do half a job still, but that’s not fair on anyone – there’s no point in just holding on to it for the sake of it.”

Having come through the Hull junior system, Davies got his first taste of senior hockey with the Kingston Jets during the 2004-05 season. He then headed south to ice for the Solihull Barons before spending two seasons with Swindon Wildcats.

A return to East Yorkshire came in time for the start of the 2009-10 season when former Coventry Blaze captain Sylvain Cloutier took over as player-coach of Hull Stingrays . Aside from a short spell at Peterborough Phantoms, Davies would spend the next six seasons there, until the club folded.

He spent one season as Manchester Storm captain on their return to the Elite League before returning to the EPL to help Telford Tigers win the league title.

The call to go ‘home’ came again the following summer, though, where he spent three season with Hull Pirates until the pandemic intervened in March March 2020.

Like manay players, Davies spent the next 18 months off the ice, returning to the ice for Leeds Knights’ debut season under new owner Steve Nell.

After one season, though, the opportunity to form a new team in Hull proved too great to ignore. Not surprisingly, like most new ventures, it has proved a testing first year for the Seahawks but one Davies is now set on seeing through a winning conclusion.

Davies will now be completely free to concentrate on moving the Seahawks organisation forward, this season’s primary target being to make it to the NIHL National play-offs, an uphill task given the early-season difficulties the team faced.

Neither of their import signings arrived until November with one of them – Emil Svec – then being banned for 10 games for a hit he made on his debut against Telford Tigers.

Other lengthy bans plus a raft of injury issues have plagued the Seahawks, who go into Wednesday’s clash against second-placed Leeds 10 points off the play-offs with 21 regular season games remaining.

"It’s exciting what we’ve got going on here,” added Davies. “I know we’ve had our fair share of difficulties this season, but there are a lot of positives to build on.

"We’ve got a lot of good players and we’re already working on next season’s roster. My aim now is to produce a Hull team that can really challenge for silverware on a regular basis over the coming years.”