THE Cheshire Phoenix and Manchester Giants matches provided me with mixed emotions but I am still happy with how Worcester Wolves are progressing.

Cheshire are tipped to be in the top half of the table and I thought we played well against them with all the players performing.

We had five guys in double figures again, including Robert Thurman and Remi Dibo, but, more importantly, the defence was really solid and I was really pleased.

On the other hand, I was disappointed in our performance on Sunday against Manchester.

We were excellent in the first quarter but you can’t play people for 40 minutes and we gradually fell apart after I made substitutions.

Their confidence built and ours dwindled as the game got tighter.

I don’t think we handled that situation very well and it’s something we will be looking at addressing in the next few days.

I’m still learning about whether I can make substitutions or not when we’re 15 points up and who’s the best defensive line-up.

From that game against Manchester we learnt a lot about the players and their characters. However, it’s not panic stations by any means, I think it was just one of those things that when we had them down we didn’t put them down.

I’m sure everyone was disappointed and if we’re in that situation ever again the same thing won’t happen.

In games to come we won’t have such a collective collapse where we have so many players who are not on form. Right now, you can’t read too much into the league, it’s early stages and people are still trying to figure each other out so I am still happy with where we are.

The important thing is that we win the head to heads against teams more times than not.

We play Manchester again on November 14 so we’ve got a chance to put that right.

It’s very frustrating that we don’t play again until Surrey United visit the University Arena next Friday because after a defeat like that you want to bounce straight back.

We do have this mini break coming up but we’re going to be on the court working very hard to make sure we can put those little things right to make sure when we play Surrey that we’re firing on all cylinders. Hopefully, there will be another large crowd for that game, as there was against Cheshire.

We’re a team in development but I think the fans saw some really good things from them as well as some things that we’re going to need to put right.

We can certainly do a lot more work on our fitness so we’re going to spend these next few days working the guys really hard.