SWINDON Wildcats owner Steve Nell believes he is making the right move for the sustainable future of the club in applying to join the National Ice Hockey League Division One South from next season.

The application has been put in by the Link Centre club on advice from English Ice Hockey Association chairman Ken Taggart, which was sent to the remaining seven English Premier League clubs on Sunday evening.

Nell is unsure at this stage what the response of the other six teams will be but says he has taken the right measures to secure the future of ice hockey in the town.

“For us, we’re stable and we’re not concerned about the future,” he told the Adver. “We’ll be playing and it just depends what league we’ll be playing in and at the moment, it’s just too hard to call.

“We play in a league that is put on by the English Ice Hockey Association, so when the chairman says everybody needs to do that, I have got to cover my bases and basically do it for the future of hockey in Swindon.

“Everything at the club is going in the right direction in all areas, and for us, we want to play at the highest level we can but the league has got to be sustainable and unfortunately it might not be.

“You can’t get to June or July and not have a league to play in, there has got to be a league to play in.

“With seven teams, it is workable as an EPL but everybody has got to commit and everybody is not committing at this point and it’s difficult.

“I have just got to do what is best for hockey in Swindon and not really worry too much about what everybody else is doing.”

The club will have a meeting with the NIHL on Sunday, May 7, where the application will be heard and while Nell admits he is surprised that this is the path that British hockey appears to be heading down, he thinks it could work out to be a positive move for the sport.

“We hoped that teams would have wanted to have come up into the EPL but there is nobody coming forward for that,” he added.

“It might end up being the best thing for hockey in general in the UK. We’d end up with a bigger league, if other teams drop down as well, and that gives more variation for the fans and different teams to see.

“I think it might end up being a good thing in the long run.

“You’ve got the Elite League in discussions about their format next year, so nobody really knows where the sport is.

“I’d like to think everybody can come together and get the right structure in place for British hockey and hopefully we’ll be the start of that.”