SWINDON Wildcats’ player-coach Aaron Nell was left unimpressed by his team’s performance despite claiming a 6-5 overtime win over Hull Pirates.

Going into the game the Wildcats knew only a win would be enough to qualify for next weekend’s English Premier League play-off finals.

Not only did they need to win, they also needed MK Lightning to defeat Basingstoke Bison in Group B’s other fixture.

While the Cats took care of their own business, their play-off hopes were crushed as Bison delivered a 3-2 win over Milton Keynes.

Stevie Whitfield, Tomasz Malasinski, Jonas Hoog, Sam Bullas and Max Birbraer were all on target for the victory, with the latter snatching the penultimate goal.

While the Wildcats’ chief was happy with the points, he admits the performance left a lot to be desired as they crashed out of the play-offs.

“It’s disappointing and obviously it is very fresh right now. In all the big games we froze a little bit at key times,” said Nell

“I don’t think we did ourselves justice in the play-offs. The two teams both deserve to go through.

“There can be no complaints there, they got the goals they needed and we did so we were always chasing.

“I think it was the result we needed but it wasn’t the greatest performance.

“We were great in the first seven or eight minutes where we were penned in their end and we got two big goals.

“When it was 5-5 they had the momentum. We were too reactive all night, we sat back because we thought we had it.”

While some may think the Cats have nothing left to play for this season, that is not an opinion which is shared by Nell who is aiming for another two points in tomorrow night’s clash with Basingstoke Bison.

“Tomorrow we are still going to go hard because it is our last game of the season,” added Nell

“We still want to win two points. Games against Basingstoke are never meaningless we are going to go hard and have a good send off for our home fans who have been great all year.”

With 10 minutes of the game remaining teenager Kyle Smith suffered a head injury which cut his night short as he left the ice on a stretcher.