Comets face uphill battle after Somerset edge speedway cup first leg
Last updated 12:42, Monday, 13 October 2008
Knockout Cup final, first leg: Comets 43 Somerset Rebels 46: Workington speedway’s Holy Grail – which was within touching distance two weeks ago – now looks a million miles away.
The injury to skipper Kauko Nieminen, which ruled him out of the Knockout Cup final was a severe blow, but the coup de grace was almost certainly administered at Derwent Park.
The Comets, clearly the underdogs, needed to establish a decent lead from the home leg to take to the Oak Tree Arena next Friday.
Acting captain Carl Stonehewer was looking for at least 15 points, others thought it would need to be more like 20.
But the fact that the Comets actually LOST Saturday’s home leg will make it virtually impossible for them to win the trophy on aggregate.
Workington’s night of despair was fairly succinctly summed up in the penultimate race of the night just after they had pulled level from being behind throughout the whole meeting.
John Branney, battling hard as usual to try and improve his position between the third and fourth turns came off, and was subsequently taken to hospital with a suspected broken bone in his foot.
He was excluded from the re-run which left Joe Haines to take on Stephan Katt and Matthias Kroger. When Haines spluttered to a standstill halfway down the back straight on lap one it left the Somerset pair to sail round unchallenged to win the meeting with a 5-0.
Team manager Ian Thomas said: “There’s no doubt that the best team won on the night. They had bad luck and we had as well, but overall they rode splendidly and are a very good team.
“We were always going to be up against it but I thought we might have just sneaked an advantage to take with us to Somerset.”
The cold stats make hard reading. Haines was the only regular Comet to win a race - all the other five victories were recorded by the guest Jason Lyons.
The Comets did not manage a heat advantage until the sixth race when Lyons scored the first of his five wins and Charles Wright came in third.
The first of only two heat maximums in heat nine was only achieved because leader Jordan Frampton shed a chain.
That was also followed by a 4-2 in heat ten when Emil Kramer, the Somerset captain also had to pull up with mechanical problems while he was lying second. Both home wins were recorded by Lyons.
The Birmingham rider was beaten in the very first race of the night but went on to reel off five straight wins and justify his booking as a guest.
Jason Doyle had gone a long way clear in that opening heat, and finished in a quick time of 63.7 (just half a second outside the track record) but Lyons came round Stephan Katt on the last turn to grab second. But from that 4-2 lead Somerset gradually built their advantage until by the eighth heat it was as high as it was going to go – eight points.
Heats two and three were shared but the green helmet colours of Matthias Kroger and Emil Kramer provided Somerset with their three points each time.
In fact the green helmet colour took the chequered flag in all five opening races – and in eats four and five Somerset were able to eke out 4-2 advantages.
Branney had slid off in heat four as he did his best to catch Jordan Frampton which allowed former Comet Brent Werner, who was looking only a pale shadow of his former self, to take third place.
The green for go sequence was halted in heat six when Lyons got away best and after being rounded by Frampton on the second turn fought back to go hard under him on the fourth bend and open up a lead which he maintained.
Somerset scored their first 5-1 in heat seven when Katt and Kremer beat Stonehewer. Kroger touched the tapes in heat eight and went off 15 metres but the Comets pair of Wright and Branney could only ensure a share of the spoils as they followed in Kremer.
An eight-point deficit was already looking ominous for the Comets but two slices of luck in heats nine and ten, both won by Lyons, edged them back into the contest.
First Frampton lost his chain and then Kramer pulled -up with mechanical problems, which allowed the Comets to collect invaluable advantages of 5-1 and 4-2 respectively.
Frampton and Doyle ensured Somerset weren’t long in regaining the initiative as they collected a 5-1 over Stonehewer in heat eleven.
Workington hit back with a 4-2 from Haines and Branney (split by Kramer) and then had another slice of good fortune in heat thirteen.
Doyle was excluded for being over the time limit; Werner was brought in as a reserve replacement but he touched the tapes and there was no alternative but for Somerset to go with the one rider, Frampton.
Lyons and Stoney shut him out the Rebels rider completely round the first two turns and went on to register the 5-1.
But that good fortune suddenly turned round completely with the Comets suffering disasters with Branney and Haines in the penultimate race and the meeting was lost.
It was really only a statistical appendage that the Comets took a 4-2 in the last, won by Lyons with Doyle grabbing second from Stoney on the line.
MATCH FACTS
Workington 43: Jason Lyons 17, Charles Wright 3, rider replacement for Kauko Nieminen; Joe Haines 9, Carl Stonehewer 8, Tomi Reima 1, John Branney 5.
Somerset 46: Jason Doyle 10, rider replacement for Simon Walker, Emil Kramer 10, Steffan Katt 9, Jordan Frampton 9, Matthias Kroger 6, Brent Werner 2.
