NELL: No reward for season's best (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

NELL: No reward for season's best

6:10pm Thursday 29th October 2009 in Steve Nell's Column

DESPITE the final score being a 6-5 overtime defeat, I thought Sunday’s performance at Peterborough was our best of the season.

We didn’t get off to the start we wanted to being 5-2 down but we showed a lot of character and worked hard to bring it back to five-all, take it to overtime and earn a bonus point.

We could have even won it in the extra period and both sides had two or three good chances but in the end it went their way, but that doesn’t take away from the team’s display on the day.

A few players stood out for me on the day, including Jozef Kohut and Aaron Nell, but it was a much better team performance all-round.

Saturday was a bit of a different story, losing 8-3 at home to Basingstoke. We had a good opening 30 minutes but struggled after that to be honest.

The main thing for us now is that we find a bit of consistency after Sunday’s display. It’s taken a bit of time to get there, and we’ve had a few bad results, but at the time of writing we are seventh in the league. When you consider two teams dropped down from the Elite league this year that would effectively be fifth in last year’s table.

I’m not saying I would settle for seventh, but it gives us something to build on.

Defenceman Andrejs Lavrenovs, who is with us for the rest of the season after replacing Dylan Row, played his first games for us and was solid at the back. Juraj Rusic did well on the wing in both games too.

We’re waiting for news on when Gareth Endicott may be back on the ice but we hope Jan Krajicek will be back if not this week, then next.

This will likely mean Rusic will have to be let go, as we can’t afford to have five imports at once, but maybe we can work something out.

I’m writing this before our Wednesday game at home to Milton Keynes, which we hope will be a half-term hit, and follow this with a trip to Manchester on Sunday.