SWINDON Wildcats player-coach Aaron Nell said his side did what they had to do after cruising to a 5-0 win over NIHL South One bottom side Invicta Dynamos on Saturday night.

Sam Bullas opened the scoring for the Cats with a simple finish in the first period, before two quickfire goals from Edgars Bebris in the second session put the home side firmly in control at the Link Centre.

The Cats took advantage of a small Invicta squad – the Dynamos only had 14 skaters available – to net their fourth and fifth goals late on.

First, Toms Rutkis netted before huge scenes of jubilation greeted Tyler Plews following the Scots’ first goal in Swindon colours.

Swindon’s win – combined with Peterborough Phantoms’ shoot-out loss – puts the Cats just a point behind their title rivals in second in the table, although Peterborough have two games in hand.

While Nell was happy his players did what was expected of them, he feels their next five fixtures will show where they are as a team, starting away at Raiders on Sunday.

He said: “We bounced back tonight, but we’ll know where we are again after tomorrow. That is the game that we’ll be judged on.

“It’s a big game for us and we’re excited. We need to go there and play a good game.

“Tonight was about getting the points and moving on. It was a tough game to play in, but people showed they cared, with the couple of fights and so on.

“We’ve got a good group, we just need to bring it now. The talking is over, it’s about us showing up and our next five games, we’ll know where we’re at after those five games.

“It was good to win again at home after the last two weeks. Tonight was a bit of a no-win situation for the players, we’ve got a much bigger squad than Invicta, but we did what we had to do tonight.

“I think we would have won without me and Sam, but the best bit about tonight was having a full line-up.

“It was the first time we’ve had a full team in a long time. We had four lines, we’ll do that again tomorrow and as long as everyone is playing hard and we play with the intensity that we need to play with, we’ll be successful.”

The Wildcats travel to London tomorrow to take on the Raiders and Nell is aware his side are in for a much sterner test against a side that beat them 5-2 at the Link last weekend.

He said: “It’s going to be a tough game tomorrow. They’ve won four in a row, they had a great weekend last week and they’re going to come at us and try and prove that they can do it against us twice.

“It’s a big game for us, we need to get those two points back because I know Peterborough lost (on penalties) tonight.

“We need to slowly but surely claw back points and chase Peterborough, tomorrow is a game that we need to win if we want to be successful in this league."