SWINDON Wildcats net-minder Stevie Lyle will be hoping that the bad blood from Sunday’s match with Telford Tigers won’t boil over into their next meeting.

Sunday’s match was brought to a premature end following a serious head injury to Telford’s Scott McKenzie, who was taken to hospital but was later released.

The game had already simmered over before that after Jason Silverthorn launched a revenge attack on Tomasz Malasinki, breaking his stick on the Cats’ Polish forward before getting thrown out of the game.

Shane Moore and Maxim Birbraer also both found themselves in the sin-bin for an altercation and Lyle was glad that the game was brought to an end with just over ten minutes to go to prevent any more fights.

Despite that being the last game for the two sides in the regular season the two could still meet in the Challenge Cup Final or in the play-offs and the veteran goalie is hoping that there will be no repeat performance.

“There will most probably be one or two unsettled scores but if you are playing for a cup sometimes you have got to put them to one side,” said Lyle.

“I’m kind of glad the game got called off purely on the basis that it would have been a long night here in Telford because there would have been a lot of guys fighting.

“I think the referee let it go a little bit.

“There were a couple of calls he should have made and then a couple of guys got frustrated and then the referee lost control.

“The actual hit that stopped the game was a clean hit, it is just unfortunate the guy has turned around away from the hit and caught his head on the side of the board. It is just a very unfortunate thing.

“From the referee’s point of view it is important to read the game and get a feel of the game as well.

“If you know it is getting out of control, which before the hits it was, the referee should really go to both coaches and ask the teams to start playing hockey.”

Despite the loss Lyle is happy with where Swindon are in the league and already has one eye on the play-offs at the end of the season.

“Every game is a learning curve, whether you are winning or losing, but we are still where we want to be in the league,” added Lyle.

“I think there are about 13 games to go until the play-offs, so it is just about trying to keep guys healthy and just to stay positive.”