SWINDON Wildcats chief Aaron Nell hopes his side learn from the errors that contributed to their personal fright night at the Peterborough Phantoms.

Having been edged out 4-3 at home by the Guildford Flames on Saturday, Nell’s troops suffered a second successive defeat on the opening weekend of their 2016-17 campaign as they were trounced 6-1 in Cambridgeshire tonight.

While not pressing the panic button two games into the season, player-coach Nell hopes that his team feel compelled to improve upon where they went wrong against the Phantoms.

“That obviously wasn’t part of the plan. There’s no excuses. The better team won and they wanted it more,” said Nell.

“We had a good game on Saturday night but they wanted it more and we’ve just got to look at ourselves and be better.

“We had a few positives – but not enough – and we’ve just got to come back and be tighter, and come back to training and work our way out of it.

“It’s one week in, two games in; we’ve just got to look in the mirror and work a lot harder.

“We’ve all got to give more and we’ll be successful. We’re not a bad team – we showed that on Saturday night.

“We were unlucky on Saturday night but tonight, we weren’t unlucky and we got what we deserved but we’ve got to move on.

“If we have a bad shift, that’s okay.

“Everything’s not going to be perfect because we were playing against two good teams this weekend but when we make mistakes, we can’t keep on making them shift after shift after shift.

“We did some good stuff but we’re getting punished for our mistakes because it’s one or two in a row and when other teams make mistakes on us, they just make one.”

Nell’s troops found themselves under the cosh right from the off, with the hosts’ Petr Stepanek notching with just 53 seconds gone.

Toms Rutkis’ snapshot restored parity but there was to be little else to smile about for the visitors during a dismal first period as the Phantoms ran riot.

Darius Pliskauskas restored the home side’s lead and then James Ferrara and Tom Norton notched in quick succession to make it 4-1.

Any hopes of Cats constructing an unlikely comeback early in the second period were soon put to bed as James Archer forced home early on to heap further misery on Swindon.

Martins Susters grabbed Peterborough’s sixth in the third period to finish off the rout.

Nell added: “They came flying out of the blocks and got that early goal, and that was a bit of a killer. But we came back into the game really well and 10 minutes in, we were in a really good spot.

“Their goalie (Janis Auzins) made a massive, massive save on the power play and that’s why he’s an import and that’s why he’s very good.

“Then, we had three or four minutes of madness. At 4-1, the game was over.”