SWINDON Wildcats player-coach Aaron Nell wants more of the same from his side as they get ready to take on Basingstoke Bison on Boxing Day.

Nell was impressed with how his team played last Saturday despite seeing them fall just short against MK Lightning in a 4-3 defeat.

Sunday’s game at Hull Pirates gave Nell plenty to be happy about as they registered a 3-2 win.

Nell’s troops will face Basingstoke twice in two days just after Christmas and is urging his side to replicate last weekend’s level of performance in the festive double-header. “We’ve set a benchmark,” said Nell. “More often than not we need to play like that and, if we do that, we will be successful.

“It (playing back-to-back) doesn’t happen as much as it used to. It’s another team who are very good. We have shown now we can play like that for two games in a weekend.

“All we have to do is stick together, work hard and compete. When you do that you get the little bounces, things go your way.

“We need to keep on working hard, we have made a lot of progress from a few weeks ago where we were really poor.”

However, the win at Hull was marred by an injury to teenager Ollie Stone who was knocked unconscious following a hit from Jordan Stokes in the final period.

Nell, who is also on the list of crocked players, admits he hasn’t seen anything like it before at the Wildcats, who are still without several key players.

“Me and Callum (Buglass) are out, as we know, for the rest of the year, he’s still waiting to have his operation,” he added. “Toms (Rutkis) is at the frustrating stage right now where he is getting very close, so we are hoping he’ll be back around the middle of January.

“Who knows about Ollie (Stone)? It could have been a lot worse, we have a long list. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“Matt (Selby) is another one. He’s not playing at the moment because of a precaution hopefully he’ll be back in the next couple of weeks.”

However Nell is hopeful that youngster Kyle Smith (knee) will return sooner rather than later after the teenager returned to training.

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