SWINDON Wildcats player-coach Aaron Nell was relieved to come away with all the points after his penalty secured a shootout win over Telford Tigers.

In what was a cagey game against Telford, who went into the game level on points with league leaders Hull Pirates, there was no separating the sides at the end of sixty minutes.

Jason Silverthorn had opened the scoring for the visitors six minutes into the second period before Ben Davies, playing his penultimate game for the club, got the Cats back level a minute before the second break.

Neither side were able to kill the game off in overtime and after Jonas Höög and Milan Kolena had cancelled each other out in the opening five penalties, it came down to Nell to secure the two points.

“It’s part of my job,” said Nell when asked about the pressure of taking the decisive penalty.

“It’s my job to score goals and I haven’t been doing enough of that so far this season and it is maybe part of the reason why we are where we are.

“We didn’t really want to make a mistake because we will back ourselves in a shootout every time.

“If we had won three of the first four games, we would have gone a bit more gung-ho in that overtime but we were a bit defensive and it worked in the end when you have got Stevie Lyle in goal.

“We needed that tonight. After the first two weekends, we were under a bit of pressure tonight and I thought we put in a great performance over the sixty-five minutes and got what we deserved.

“The first five minutes were massive, we needed to make sure we were solid and then we built on it.

“We got a big goal at the end of the second and played a really good game.”

That is Swindon’s second two-point game of the season and Nell is now confident that his side can build from that result, starting with a trip to Guildford Flames tomorrow.

“We had to be more desperate than them tonight and even if we hadn’t of won that shootout, we had made a big step forward,” added Nell.

“It is not normally that intense in September.

“Our big players, until tonight, maybe haven’t been there but we turned a big corner tonight.

“Our line didn’t score tonight but it was our best game of the year and we have been getting chances and they’ll come as long as we work hard – tonight is the start of that.

“It’s early in the season and there is lots to be done, but we will get better.

“We have put ourselves into a hole in the first two weekends of the season and we need to win tomorrow to get back onto par.”