AARON Nell questioned his Swindon Wildcats players’ commitment after they were embarrassed on the road at Milton Keynes Lightning on Saturday night.

In the second leg of a testing run of three successive matches in as many nights, the Wildcats were battered 9-4 in Buckinghamshire, letting in the most goals they’ve conceded in any defeat all season so far.

Post-match, player-coach Nell regrettably surmised that a large portion of his troops weren’t prepared to give their all on the ice for Swindon and threw down the gauntlet to his charges to buck their ideas up.

The Cats chief also felt sorry for teenage netminder Jordan Hedley, who was offered sparse protection as his former side MK laid siege to his goal in the second and third periods.

“It wasn’t good enough and we’ve had that coming for a while,” said Nell.

“I don’t mind mistakes – that happens at our level – but people have got to want to be hockey players and I don’t think enough people want to be hockey players.

“They’re all happy being a Wildcat, I guess. It’s not good enough.

“Poor Jordan comes home and he gets let out to dry. They scored some great goals tonight but there’s an awful lot of games where that could have happened and we’ve had Stevie Lyle in goal saving us.

“You have some people that work their socks off and some people seem happy to just be here.

“Some people wonder why they don’t score and why they don’t do this or don’t do that, but they don’t work hard enough.

“We got embarrassed. We haven’t been blown out like that all year and you could see that we were fragile, with no fight – it’s a joke.

“It’s contract time and if people don’t want to play here, that’s fine with me, but if you want to be in this league or a higher league, you’re going to have to play.

“You can’t just have a laugh. If you can’t play for your team, you’ve got to play for yourself.”

Nell was also left furious by a late check from Frantisek Bakrlik, which laid out young D-man Callum Buglass and saw the Lightning man pick up a two plus 10 penalty.

Sam Bullas leapt to his team-mate’s defence but Swindon coach says that his club will seek video evidence to ensure that MK’s Czech forward receives further disciplinary action.

Nell said: “With two minutes to go in a 9-3 game, their best player; it’s a disgrace what he did to a 19-year-old lad.

“We’re not expecting people to fight but just stick him or cross-check him. He went there to hurt one of our guys but no – we just stand there.

“People might moan at me talking about the ref but it’s a joke that Bakrlik got a two plus 10. He should get a five plus match. He should be suspended.

“This league; they go on about ‘oh, we’re going to do video’ – we want the video and we want disciplinary on it because it’s a joke.

“He came out of the box to hurt someone and the ref’s job is to protect people and he doesn’t.”

The Wildcats were beaten 5-0 on the road at Basingstoke Bison on Friday night and tomorrow evening at the Link Centre, they renew hostilities with the English Premier League table-toppers.

“We better turn up tomorrow night because we’re playing the best team in the league and they will smell blood and they will try and embarrass us again,” said Nell.

“We’ve got one more game of a tough week but we have to turn up. We win 10-1, we lose 10-1; whatever the score is, we better turn up tomorrow night.”