AARON Nell is sure he will have no problem keeping a level-headed mentality amongst his Swindon Wildcats troops despite the team’s flying start to the new season.

Swindon swept Cardiff Fire aside 7-0 at the Link Centre on Saturday night and followed that up with a 7-2 success away at London Raiders the following evening to make it three four-point weekends in a row.

That run of form has catapulted the Cats to the top of the NIHL South One table a month into the new campaign.

After suffering a disappointing overtime loss away at Invicta Dynamos in the second match of the season, Swindon have won every match since, but player-coach Nell is under no illusions how far his side still have to go.

“It has been a really good few weeks. We had that slip-up on the first weekend of the season but we have bounced back well,” said Nell.

“It’s still very early in the season, though, so we aren’t getting ahead of ourselves. We have got different competitions we are involved in now so you can never take a night off.

“With the league schedule being 32 games now instead of the longer one that we have had over the last couple of years, if you drop a point here or there, you are in trouble.

“We have just got to keep taking it one game at a time and try to keep up that good feeling.”

After extinguishing Fire on home ice on Saturday, Swindon were emphatic winners again 24 hours later when they beat Raiders on the road, although Nell felt the contest at the Lee Valley Ice Centre was much tighter than the scoreline suggests.

The Cats may have hit the back of the net 14 times in total across the weekend but Nell was particularly pleased with the defensive display of his troops, with netminder Renny Marr having shipped just three goals over the past two away fixtures.

“It definitely wasn’t a 7-2 game, it was a lot closer than that,” said Nell.

“London played hard and we were under a lot of pressure for the first two periods but we managed to score a lot of goals late on. I thought we were pretty good in the third period and that was good to see.

“It is about hanging tough when the game is tight and finding a way to win. We were under a lot of pressure in the second period but we soaked it up well.

“Renny got man of the match and was deserving of that, he played really well. Renny has had seven games so far and had seven very good games, and in the last two away games he’s been especially good.”