THE JOY at seeing his Swindon Wildcats battle through adversity to run the high-flying Peterborough Phantoms to within a hair’s breadth soothed Aaron Nell’s frustration as his team were edged out tonight.

Cats lost a dramatic encounter 5-4 in Cambridgeshire but the scoreline barley told the full extent of the topsy-turvy tale as an evening full of controversy ended with Swindon seeing an equaliser disallowed with just six seconds on the clock.

Before their good fortune to deny Carlo Finucci a last-gasp winner for an alleged infringement, the hosts also scored a contentious first-period goal whilst both teams had men ejected from the game, Peterborough’s Edgars Bebris and Swindon’s Neil Liddiard enjoying early showers.

The visitors were also without injured player-coach Nell, netminder Stevie Lyle, and forward Sam Bullas, as well as D-man Matt Selby, who was suspended, but the Cats chief was delighted with the spirit shown by his short-benched troops.

“The result is tough but we were really, really good tonight,” said Nell.

“There was a lot of adversity but we came out hard and we got unlucky in the end – it was a great, great, great performance and if we play like we have this weekend for the next few weekends, we’ll be fine.

“It’s the performance (that’s pleasing). We played extremely hard and we ended up with three D and nine forwards, and it we played really well.

“They got the win and I’m not sure if we deserved to win. It’s a tough one to take but our performance was great and that’s what’s most important at this time of the year.

“We’ve got Milton Keynes on Wednesday and we’ll find out on Monday and Tuesday who’s going to be back and we’re going to come and play as hard as we did tonight – we had some great performances tonight.”