DAVID Colclough admits he breathed a sigh of relief after England Basketball informed him that Swindon Shock will remain in Division Three South next year.

The Shock player-coach was left in limbo after their 73-68 loss to Cardiff Met Archers in their final game of the season earlier this month.

Relegation was a realistic fear for Colclough and his Swindon side as they hovered above bottom-of-league Southwark Pride.

Shock’s saving grace was they had two fixtures unaccounted for as Southwark Pride and Oxford Brookes University both postponed their fixtures.

With no free dates to play those games, England Basketball subsequently awarded Shock the points, thus securing their league status for a further year.

After finding out the club’s fate late last week, Colclough says it feels good to start thinking about next season.

“My wife said to me that I finally seemed happier. I asked her if I was that bad and she told me I’d been an absolute grump for the last three weeks,” he said.

“It’s like the world has come off my shoulders, it is really nice. It’s been two weeks of absolute pain, constantly calling people.

“We made it harder on ourselves when we lost to Cardiff. However, we got through that and now I know we have things to work on for next season.

“We have already got plans in motion for next season. We have certain people looking at being defensive specialists, adding drills to the session and we have some who are offensive specialists.

“That way it doesn’t always fall on myself to do things. Then we are going to pull up a couple of the U18s, that way we have 15 or so running the court in training.

“This year we had eight or nine or average and I think that hurt us because we haven’t been able to work on specific situations.

“We wanted to do those kind of things, and we did a few times, but we needed to be doing it once or twice a week.”

Ahead of next season, Colclough also is looking to improve the club’s youth system, as their junior team, Shock Development, are looking to filter through to the senior side.

With the youngsters currently playing in WEBBA Division Three, Colclough says it is a great platform for the clubs more juvenile players.

“The development team is absolutely brilliant for the younger players,” he said.

“The difference between local league and national league is night and day. If you play national league you should be a star at local league.

“You can dissect the game so much easier and you can play the game much better because your movement is faster.”