RYAN Aldridge offered to shoulder some of the responsibility as his Swindon Wildcats side were caught cold by the Peterborough Phantoms this evening.

The Wildcats struggled to deal with their visitors’ early onslaught and found themselves 4-0 down and with a mountain to climb at the end of the first period.

Swindon were fighting a losing battle from then on but Aldridge was keen to chalk his team’s 5-1 defeat at the Link Centre down to inexperience.

When asked what went wrong for his players on the ice, the Wildcats chief said: “Everything. They wanted it more than we did.

“After the first period, I was as mad as anybody.

“But looking back on it, I let myself down by not calling a time-out quick enough. I should have called a time-out before the third goal.

“I think I heard the football manager (Swindon Town’s Mark Cooper) say it this year – we’ve got a young team and it’s going to happen to us every now and then.

“We’ve played well for the most part of the season but we’re a young team and when you get scored on quick like that, we don’t know how to handle that.”

As Peterborough dug in to defend their healthy lead, Swindon were denied time and again by netminder Janis Auzins.

Teenager Toms Rutkis grabbed the Wildcats’ consolation goal in the third period and Aldridge considered the youngster’s performance one of the major plus-points for his team.

“(Auzins) is a solid goalie, there’s no doubt about that. I thought in the third period, we could have had three or four goals against any other goalie in the league,” said the Swindon boss.

“But it wasn’t to be. He’s a good goalie and they’ve built a team around him.

“Toms scoring two goals in two home games; I thought he was the best player on the ice tonight.”