Swindon Wildcats head coach Aaron Nell concedes play-off qualification chances are "short"

Aaron Nell is refusing to give up the belief that the Swindon Wildcats can qualify from their play-off group, but he does admit that things are not looking good for his side.

The Cats lost 6-4 at home to the Milton Keynes Lightning on Wednesday night and the Basingstoke Bison won 3-2 away at the Hull Pirates, which leaves Swindon in a perilous position in Group B.

Swindon have only managed to pick up two points from a possible eight so far while group leaders MK have all eight and the Bison have six.

This means that the Wildcats need to beat both Hull (away) and Basingstoke (home) in their last two games while hoping that the Lightning get maximum points against the Bison, too.

On top of that, as Basingstoke beat Swindon 3-1 at Planet Ice, the Wildcats need to win by three goals in their final home match of the season.

Speaking after the Milton Keynes loss, Nell admitted that his team are now really up against it ahead of a do-or-die weekend, starting tomorrow with that trip to Hull.

"It's frustrating. It obviously wasn't the plan, we've put ourselves in a very tough spot.

"Obviously, it's not finished, but the odds of us going through now are very short.

"We've just got to keep fighting, I thought it was a pretty good hockey game, except for five minutes. The top teams don't shut off like we do in certain spots and you could see when they scored their second goal we went down and into our shells. We can't do that.

"We do (have a slight chance of progression), so we've just got to take it a game at a time, hopefully Milton Keynes can do us a favour on Saturday night then it's all down to Sunday."

If the Wildcats do not manage to progress then the season will be over for them and Nell reflected on this campaign as a whole.

"It's been tough. The injuries we've had have been very difficult and we've been patched up all season.

"It's not an excuse, it happens but it kind of sums up our luck this season. First game of the play-offs this season our most important players were as sick as a dog.

"I'm not saying we would have won the game (at Milton Keynes) with Stevie (Lyle) in goal last Wednesday but it would have been a lot closer than it was.

"Crispy (Michael Crisp) was great but the most important player's not playing, as a goalie, you've always got an uphill battle."