THE Bespoke Guardians Swindon Wildcats head coach Aaron Nell said his team produced its best two periods of the year in a 5-3 defeat to Milton Keynes Lightning on Sunday night.

Swindon started the weekend with their fifth consecutive victory – a 3-2 win away at Basingstoke Bison on Saturday – before starting slowly and ultimately being punished against MK at the Link Centre on Sunday.

Colby Tower bagged two goals in the weekend win, and Chris Jones added the third goal as Swindon came from behind.

But on Sunday, the Wildcats were three goals down inside nine minutes before bringing the score back to 4-3 via another strike from Tower and a Nell brace.

Having thrown the kitchen sink at MK late on, Sam Talbot added the killer goal into an empty net four seconds from time.

Speaking to the Wildcats’ media team, Nell lamented the first-period performance on Sunday night but highlighted plenty of positives to take away.

He said: “If you don’t show up in the first period against the top teams, you’re not going to win. We made too many mistakes in that first period and gave good players good chances.

“But in the second and third periods, I was really proud of the team. I thought we played really well, and they were maybe the best two periods of the year.

“The position we’re in, we know we’re going to finish fourth or fifth so it’s about learning. We’ve had a really good 10-game stretch over the past month or so, but I think we learned more in that MK game than we did in all the other games where we were playing well.

“I’m very happy with how we responded as a team, we showed a lot of character. We were dead and buried after nine minutes.

“I thought we played really well in the last two periods, but when you play like we did in the first period, you don’t deserve to win.”