PLAYER-COACH Aaron Nell is sure the Swindon Wildcats can book their place at finals weekend if they reproduce their play-off first leg performance at Guildford Flames tomorrow.

Tomasz Malasinski struck a late winner for the Cats at the Link Centre this evening to give them a slender 2-1 advantage ahead of tomorrow’s second leg at the Spectrum.

That was Malasinski’s second of the game as he earlier cancelled out Janis Ozolins’ opener for Guildford in a contest that was dominated by sublime saves from both netminders.

“It was good. It was a play-off game, it was fast, it was up and down, and it was two very good goalies playing. We are happy to get the win and we will take that into tomorrow,” said Nell.

“I think we needed a win going into Guildford. We will go again tomorrow and we have got to get another big win to go through.

“It was a good night, Tomasz scored two massive goals tonight but we all played hard tonight and that’s the most important thing.

“You have just got to think of it as one big game. Of course we wanted a lead going into Guildford but if it was 1-1 that would have been fine too.

“If it’s 1-1 or 2-1, if we don’t show up tomorrow night, we’re going to lose. We will look after ourselves tonight and play hard tomorrow night and see what happens.

“It all depends on how we play, if we play hard I am confident and I think we will.

“Every time this season we have been under pressure we have put up a good performance, so I think this will be another.

“We put up a good performance tonight, we’ll do another one tomorrow and we will see what happens.

“All we can do is work as hard as we can for 60 minutes and stick together and hopefully that’s enough.”