LAST weekend was a devastating one for us as our Autumn Cup title defence came to an end following our aggregate loss against Peterborough Phantoms.

Everyone put everything into that game and I believe we can consider ourselves unlucky not to earn a victory.

But at the same time we must tip our hats to Peterborough, they played really well and it was one hell of a match.

We’re obviously devastated about that result, and on Saturday (against Basingstoke) we might’ve been slightly tired – though that’s no excuse.

Six games in 10 days though is tough, and Basingstoke is always a hard place to play at.

We got a point after taking the game to overtime, though we were upset not to get two. And Sunday was another battle as well against Invicta.

They played really hard and we just managed to scrape by with a 2-1 win at the end.

It was a tough weekend for the team, but the lads showed a lot of character.

We were quite short on numbers with Floyd Taylor and Adam Harding out for all three games. It was not how we wanted the weekend to go, but we can definitely take positives from it.

We just have to learn to be consistent.

The competitiveness of the league this year has underlined our belief that short-benched teams will struggle.

We were missing a line of forwards on Sunday, so guys had to step up from the NIHL2.

It was a battle, I’m just thankful that we managed to pull things together at the end of the weekend to score those two goals against Invicta.

It’s tough, but we can’t use being short-benched as an excuse.

It’s in those situations where a team’s character shines through, so we’ve got to keep showing that and look forward to a big weekend this time around.

We’re devastated to go out of the Autumn Cup, especially as we are the defending champions.

The league is the massive one for us for us now, this weekend against Basingstoke and Peterborough is huge.

This could be a make or break weekend for the league – Basingstoke are putting up good scores at the moment, and so are Peterborough.

It’s a massive weekend for our league campaign and it really could set the tone.