SWINDON Wildcats are the only team that Milton Keynes Lightning has not beaten this season – and player-coach Aaron Nell wants to keep it that way when the pair meet at the Link Centre on Saturday.

The Cats are only in action once this weekend as they bid to bounce back from two disappointing defeats against National League leaders Telford Tigers and title-chasing Peterborough Phantoms.

While the Lightning are sixth in the table – appearing to some as a winnable game on paper – Milton Keynes have the best form in the league behind the Phantoms.

Therefore Nell will be instructing his players to not let their standards or intensity drop as the Buckinghamshire outfit will pose a serious threat to their title chances should they escape with both points.

Nell said: “Since the start of November, they’ve certainly been a top-four team and maybe even a top two or three team.

“They’re a very good team, but we are the one team they haven’t beaten yet so they’re going to be very determined to come in on Saturday night in front of a big crowd and get two points.

“We will need to make sure we’re at our best to win the game.

“They added a couple of players – Liam Stewart in particular has really helped to turn their season around. He’s one of the best players in the league.

“They had injuries at the start of the year, but they got healthy and added a couple more players. Now they’re a really good team.”

Swindon have not only been capable of picking up a large number of points this season – 61 from 45 games to be exact – leaving them in second, but Nell’s men sit third in the fair play table too.

Calculated by Penalties in Minutes (PIM), the tally shows Swindon to have accumulated 629 minutes worth of misdemeanours – only bettered by third place Peterborough and bottom side Leeds Chiefs.

Nell said he is supremely proud of his team for keeping their noses clean for as much as possible before warning others that they are from a soft touch either.

The 30-year-old said: “I take pride in us being that disciplined.

“We’ve got a team where if anything ever kicks off, we can look after ourselves but at the same time, we’ve been really disciplined in the main this year whereas some others have not.

“We’ve only had one suspension this year whereas a few other teams have had three or four even.

“That’s something we take pride and I’d much prefer to be in the position that we are as one of the teams with the fewest penalties.

“In our team, we can certainly look after ourselves physically, it’s just about keeping penalties to a minimum.”