The Ipswich Witches were well beaten by the Sheffield Tigers, 55-35, in the first leg of the Knockout Cup final last night.
The visitors remained without their top two riders in Jason Doyle and Emil Sayfutdinov due to injuries with Jaimon Lidsey and Tom Brennan guesting in their absence. The hosts were running rider replacement for Tai Woffinden.
Sheffield registered a string of 4-2s in the first half of the contest and found themselves 12 points to the good after nine races. Ipswich battled hard in the second half of the meeting but leave themselves with a big deficit to overturn at Foxhall after a 20-point defeat. Lidsey top scored with seven points.
Sheffield struck a 4-2 in heat one and heat two was stopped after a tight first bend saw Dan Thompson fall and he was excluded from the race.
In the re-run Jason Edwards managed to hold off Jordan Jenkins to win in another heat advantage to the home team. The 4-2s kept on coming in heat three before a shared heat four left the score 15-9.
It was back to a Sheffield 4-2 in heat five and another followed in heat six as Jack Holder won and Kyle Howarth passed Jenkins late on in the race for a point.
It was the same result in heat seven as Chris Holder won on this occasion and Edwards passed Danny King on the race to the line for third.
The Witches finally got their first race win of the night in heat eight as Keynan Rew was first across the line and he was followed home by Thompson for a maximum that made it 28-20.
The Tigers registered their first 5-1 of the night in heat nine and heat 10 was shared. There was another 3-3 in heat 11 but the home team hit another maximum in heat 12 to put them 44-28 up as they secured victory on the night.
Jack Holder won heat 13 but Lidsey and Adam Ellis relegated Howarth to the back to prevent another heat advantage.
Josh Pickering picked up his fifth win of the night in heat 14 but once again the visitors prevented a heat advantage as Jenkins battled past Edwards for third.
Jack Holder and Pickering completed their maximums in heat 15 as they raced to a 5-1 as Sheffield put one hand on the trophy ahead of Thursday’s second leg in Suffolk.
Witches boss Ritchie Hawkins said: “It was a far bigger deficit than we were looking to pull back on Thursday.
"It is quite clear that we have lost our race winners, and we are not winning enough races without them.
"That was the big difference and there were heats that we needed to attack for heat advantages.
"One of those was heat two and Dan fell straight away which immediately puts you on the back foot from then on.
"There were other heats where we shouldn’t drop points and we did, and we have left ourselves a big task on Thursday."
He added: “We go into Thursday with the boys determined not to roll over and to put everything into pulling the points back.
"We have had big wins at home in the past and if we can get on a roll, you never know.”
SHEFFIELD 55: Jack Holder 18 (Maximum), Kyle Howarth (c) 3, Chris Holder 10+1, Josh Pickering 17+1 (Paid Maximum), Tai Woffinden R/R, Jason Edwards 6+1, Dan Gilkes (RS) 1.
IPSWICH 35: Jaimon Lidsey (G) 7, Keynan Rew 6+1, Danny King (c) 4+1, Tom Brennan (G) 6, Adam Ellis 5+2, Jordan Jenkins 3+1, Dan Thompson (RS) 4+1.
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