AARON Nell wants to see his Swindon Wildcats side use the promise they showed last weekend as a springboard for the ‘business end’ of the campaign.

With 19 regular season fixtures remaining for the Wildcats before the play-offs in the English Premier League, they sit sixth in the table but just nine points separate them and leaders Basingstoke Bison and player-coach Nell is targeting a surge up the standings.

The Cats player-coach was buoyed by what he saw as he and his troops dispatched the Manchester Phoenix 5-3 at home last weekend before slipping to a narrow 4-3 loss on the road at Sheffield Steeldogs and wants his team to retain an upward momentum.

When asked if all his players were buying into his mantra of working as hard as possible, Nell said: “They better be because it’s part of our jobs.

“It’s the business end of the year and we’re pushing, and we’ve got to push towards the play-offs and get on a good run before the play-offs so we can go for a big end to the year.

“We always pick up two points every weekend, so that’s a positive.

“At the end of the day, you’re always going to make mistakes but we just need to try and not make mistakes at certain times and on certain parts of the ice, and try to keep them to a minimum.

“We’ve progressed. It’s been good. We played hard for 120 minutes (last weekend) and if we keep doing that and keep on improving, like we will, we’ll start getting better results and we’ll work our way up (the table).

“We’ve got 19-20 games left and we’re doing well. We’re having a good year. You’ve got to work hard and stick to it, and that’s what we’re going to do.

“We’ve made a lot of progress (last) week. We had a good week of practice, we worked hard and we’ve played two solid games.”

On Saturday, the Wildcats host last season’s regular season champions Telford Tigers at the Link Centre (face-off 5.45pm) before travelling to struggling Bracknell Bees on Sunday (face-off 6pm).

Cats have recorded three victories over the Tigers already this term but Nell is anticipating a fierce test of Swindon’s credentials.

He said: “We’ve got to be good on Saturday night because Telford are very good team and it will be a test.

“We didn’t get the bounces (against Sheffield) but we’ll pull back and the weekend is huge – Saturday’s a massive hockey game.”