SWINDON Wildcats forward Adam Harding paid tribute to the vital role goalie Stevie Lyle played in his side’s sparkling weekend.

Lyle pulled off a shutout as the Wildcats thrashed English Premier League leaders Telford Tigers 4-0 at the Link Centre on Saturday before starring in Sunday’s penalty shoot-out win at Milton Keynes Lightning, with the Swindon netminder saving every attempt whilst Aaron Nell fired in the match-winner.

Harding opened the scoring at Lightning, with his team seeing a 2-0 lead dramatically cancelled out in the third period to force overtime and the eventual penalty contest, and the Swindon man says that the form of his fellow Welshman breeds confidence throughout his team.

“Stevie was unreal all game. Without him, it would be a different story,” said Harding.

“He’s been unbelievable for us all weekend. You’re just a lot more confident. You can move out the way for the shot rather than trying to block it yourself.

“You can move out the way so he can see it because you know he’s going to save it. So it makes it a lot easier to defend and he plays the puck quite a lot, which helps us out.

“I thought we were all over them in the first period and then in the second period, they came back and we were lucky to come back in with a 2-0 lead going in to the third.

“In the third period, they kept pressing and pressing and we had nothing but trap. We had to trap and keep dumping the puck.

“But we played solid defensively I thought. They’re always going to have chances and we were just unfortunate that they scored two goals.

“We obviously wanted to score in overtime but you kind of want to take it into a shoot-out because you know Stevie is going to save them.

“We’ve got three unbelievable forwards. That was a nice goal from Aaron and Tomasz (Malasinski) and Jani (Kostal) were unlucky not to score, so it’s all through Stevie really – he gives us a lot of confidence.”

Harding says that the Wildcats were bouncing after stretching their winning run to four games, racking up points in both the EPL and the Challenge Cup with victory at Milton Keynes.

He added: “There’s a good atmosphere in the locker room now and we feel unbelievable about beating Telford - the league leaders - 4-0. That was tremendous.

“And then Sunday was for cup points as well so it’s put us in a good spot. It was a huge weekend.”