AARON Nell believes that his Swindon Wildcats side will need to keep their fire burning this weekend if they’re to maintain their impressive recent form.

After a stuttering start to the season, the Cats have roared into life with successive four-point weekends, beating the Telford Tigers and Guildford Flames on September 24 and 25 before triumphing over the Bracknell Bees and Manchester Phoenix last weekend.

This time out, they host the Peterborough Phantoms on Saturday (face-off 5.45pm) before visiting table-toppers Telford, who are yet to be bested in regulation time so far this season, on Sunday (6pm).

Nell’s troops were beaten 6-1 by the Phantoms in their first road game of the current English Premier League campaign while Telford have recently recruited Great Britain international Sam Oakford, who featured twice for the Wildcats in January 2015.

“In the last few weeks, we’ve really improved and we’re in a much better position than we were in a few weeks ago – now we’re in a position to push on,” said Swindon player-coach Nell.

“We can never get too confident but two weeks ago, things didn’t look so good.

“The boys have worked really hard recently and they’ve deserved the results they’ve got.

“I think that the work-rate and desire has been great and we really needed it two weekends ago against Telford.

“They put us under a lot of pressure but we stood up to that and then, we worked just as hard the following night against Guildford.

“Against Bracknell and Manchester last weekend, we were very professional and that was great to see as well.

“Saturday will be a tough game because Peterborough are a very smart team and have some good players so we’ve got to be ready to carry on working hard against them.

“Going to Telford is always really hard because they’ve spent an awful lot of money and they’ve just brought in another very good player (Oakford) but we usually do well against them and we’ve got to want it more than them.

“I don’t care how good they are – we can always go there and want it more than them.”

Cats are currently fourth in the early-season EPL table, two points ahead of sixth-placed Peterborough and four behind pace-setters Telford.