STEWART Dickson has urged his riders to ensure poor form doesn’t start eating away at their hopes of finishing top of the SGB Championship after a defeat against title rivals Ipswich knocked them off the summit.
The Witches have overtaken Glasgow in the table – though they’ve raced four more meetings than the Tigers – following a 52-41 victory at Foxhall.
The visitors struggled for heat wins, taking just five all night – three of those through a rampant Richie Worrall who scored 16 of their points.
Their cause wasn’t helped by the loss of in-form reserve Tom Perry, who’d withdrawn through illness in the morning, with Tom Bacon deputising.
Dickson said he could make no excuses for the result – but is keen to ensure his riders’ heads don’t drop, with this result coming off the back of a disappointing collapse at Workington on Saturday.
He said: “It didn’t happen for us. We got a bit of a backlash, I think, because they lost at home last week.
“We didn’t know what we were going to face – would they crumble or would they bounce back?
“The plan was to try and get into them really early and hopefully knock their confidence, but it never happened. We did the track walk and the starts were really grippy – the riders liked them – but we could not, apart from Richie Worrall, make a gate.
“The rest of our guys who are normally so reliable out the starts couldn’t make a start and that was the first seven races.
“The guys were trying things and then we did start making some gates – Nike Lunna made one in heat eight – but even when Richard Lawson and Aaron Summers were making starts, they were still getting passed by their heatleaders.
“It’s a track we’ve gone well at in the last four or five years but to be honest, we would’ve stolen a point had we taken one – because they were by far the better team.”
He added: “It’s only the second time this season we’ve not taken at least a point, but we’ve got to watch that doesn’t start to creep in now.
“We’ve just got to watch that our form isn’t turning off slightly – we’ve got to keep an eye on it.
“But I’m not going to make any excuses that we had bad luck, we were soundly beaten by a much sharper team, and fair play to Ipswich, they’ve come back really well from their defeat.
“We need to dust ourselves down. We’ve got five guys at Peterborough for the Fours on Sunday and then a full week to prepare for the Scottish derby a week on Saturday.”
The result puts Ipswich top, with Glasgow in second, Edinburgh third and Sheffield fourth – with three points splitting the top four.
Tigers scorers: Richie Worrall 16, Aaron Summers 8+1, Nike Lunna 6+1, Dan Bewley 5+1, Richard Lawson 4, Tom Bacon 2, Jack Smith 0.