SWINDON Wildcats player-coach Aaron Nell says his side must “leave it all” on the ice tonight as they welcome Streatham to the Link Centre, looking to wrap up a first league title in their current guise.

Not since the Ice Lords in 1997 has a Swindon ice-hockey team ever been crowned league champions, so with just one win needed from their final three NIHL South One games to create history, Nell’s side are in a comfortable position.

The Cats ensured they would be allowed to win the league in front of their own fans after a thrilling 5-4 comeback over Basingstoke Bison last Sunday, ending their opponents’ slim hopes of stealing the trophy in the process.

With a metaphorical cup final ahead of them, Nell says his mantra of taking it a game at a time has paid dividends and is keen for his players continue as normal to ensure no slip-ups.

Nell said: “There’s a lot of noise – there’s excitement and you could see last weekend how hard we had to work to get that win.

“We need to keep our feet on the ground and make sure we do it this weekend.

“All we’ve done since Christmas is take it a game at a time and we’ll continue to do that this weekend.

“We’ve had two good practices and we need to make sure we leave it all out there on Saturday.

“The players have been fantastic, I can’t put enough praise on them.

“We’ve just got one more game to go and we need to make sure we finish the job and it will be great to finish it on Saturday.”

Central to the Cats’ title aspirations has been the current 15-game winning league run – a stretch that started days after the re-signing of fan favourite Jonas Hoog.

Nell countered those people who have argued Swindon would have walked to the title if Hoog was on the roster at the start of the season by hinting that it was a kind of fate for things to have turned out the way they have.

Nell wants a bumper crowd at the Link on Saturday to help push his side over the line as they aim to make history.

He said: “The players have been unbelievable in this run, they’ve bought into what I wanted from them and Jonas coming in really helped us, but if he had come in and we had carried on playing like we were before Christmas, then we wouldn’t have won 15 in a row.

“The players are fully committed, and things are good right now, so we just want to keep on going.

“I hope there will be a great crowd. There was a great crowd and atmosphere last week and that really helped push us on.”