SWINDON Wildcats player-coach Aaron Nell thinks his side are well placed heading into the new year break after completing a second perfect weekend in a row in NIHL South One.

The Wildcats do not play again until January 19 and will enjoy their lay-off sitting at the top of the table following back-to-back wins at bottom sides Milton Keynes Thunder and Invicta Dynamos.

A week earlier, Swindon beat two of their three main rivals at the top of the table – Basingstoke Bison and Peterborough Phantoms – on consecutive nights.

Those results brought an end to a tough run in December, with the Cats only winning four of 10 games in the month.

However, Nell thinks his side have arrested their dip in form just at the right time.

“You can see there is more confidence in the group again and a bit more excitement too,” said Nell.

“I think this is a good time to go into the break. We can rest up before coming back in and looking forward to the final part of the season.

“I can’t put a reason on why we had that little blip. We had two bad games in a row at home where we just weren’t good enough.

“We bounced back in a few games, but we were just lacking that killer instinct and lacking a spark.

“Hopefully we have sorted that out now and we can have a good second part of the season.

“Beating Basingstoke and Peterborough were two massive wins. If we had lost one or both of them, we would be completely out of the race to finish top of the table.

“They were two huge wins and we knew we had to follow it up with two more this weekend.

“Now we have four in a row, so we can look to push on after the break and hope to continue this winning run.”

Although the quality of opposition for Swindon’s two most recent wins was not the strongest, Nell was full of admiration for the level of performance his side were able to produce.

He said: “It was a good weekend. Even though we were up against two of the lower teams, I thought we played really well.

“We worked on a lot of stuff in practice in the week and executed it really well.”