SCOTT SPEARING says Bracknell Bees still have room for improvement despite their impressive start to the season.
Spearing, who took the job of head coach at the beginning of this campaign, has guided Bracknell to four wins from their first six games, including a four-point weekend last time out with wins over Basingstoke Bison and Milton Keynes Thunder.
Bees did suffer a setback with back-to-back defeats last month, but have since scored 22 goals in three games to sit third in the NIHL 1 South table.
And Spearing says the early signs are looking promising.
“There are lots of positives,” he told The Wokingham Paper.
“There’s a lot of stuff still to work on, but it’s nice to know that we’re still getting results even though there are things that we can improve on.
“I think even though we lost those two games against Peterborough and Basingstoke, I feel that we took a lot of confidence from those games.
“We feel like we played the better game and played more consistent for 60 minutes. It was just a couple of small errors.
“It’s a game of errors – whoever makes the least amount of errors wins.
“I felt like maybe the bounces didn’t go our way in that weekend and to be honest I’m a bit sour because I thought we deserved the wins.
“But it’s a long season and we play those teams about 10 times so we’ve got a lot of time to get those points back and make sure we punish them later on.”
Bees sit third in the league and are already chasing Swindon and Peterborough, meaning this weekend’s double-header against Streatham at The Hive on Saturday and Cardiff away
on Sunday (both 6pm) take on real importance already.
And having beaten Cardiff 11-1 in Bracknell just last month, Spearing is relishing the chance to heap more misery on the strugglers.
“They’ll want to come back with a better performance than they did,” he said.
“I’m sure they’ll have a few more players than when they came to Bracknell. It will be good to see what they’re like at full capacity with all their team.
“But at the same time, I don’t want to give them any confidence to think that they’re going to compete with us this year.
“I want to make sure we go there and we hit them straight off the start and go for a big win again.”
Saturday’s clash with Streatham represents another new challenge for Bees having not faced them yet since dropping down from the EPIHL.
And Spearing says it takes a bit of time to work out how the unfamiliar sides will play.
“All the NIHL teams to us are new,” he explained.
“So it’s getting used to who they are and how they play and what the coaching style is like.
“It’s nice to get the first one out of the way, especially on home ice.
“I’m confident we’re going to do a good job against them, but you can’t underestimate any teams this year.
“We’ll be making sure we play solid, just the way we’ve played for our other games.
“We’re just going to get on them straightaway and work hard and do the little things right.”
And Spearing is also hoping to keep hold of the new supporters who have been turning up to The Hive this year.
“There seems to be new faces and lots of new shirts being sold,” said the player-coach.
“That’s great for the club because it’s just reinvestment into the team, supporters club and management.
“It just allows us to keep improving all the facilities.
“We just need the crowds to keep coming and that’s all we can hope for.
“We’ll keep working hard and keep winning for the fans and hopefully they’ll keep coming.”
