Glasgow picked up a point on the road at Sheffield tonight – but it could have been so much more.
The Tigers suffered a massive stroke of bad luck when captain Aaron Summers was thrown off his bike by a broken chain while leading heat 12 – handing the home side a 5-1.
Had his machinery not let him down, and the other heat results remained the same, the sides would have gone on to draw 45-45. Instead, Glasgow went down 48-42, but did gain one Premier League point from their narrow defeat.
Tigers team boss Stewart Dickson insisted he wasn’t too downheartened. He said: “I’m not bad, because we could have got nothing.
Close Call
“Heat 12 robbed us the last-heat decider, which I think might have put a bit of pressure on. But the fact that that didn’t happen is one of those things.
“If they had got a 4-2 in heat 15, we would have got nothing. The riders had decided that they were going off gates two and four, in the opposite of what I wanted. But I switched it – I told Nick Morris that he wasn’t gating.
“I put Richard Lawson off gate two. Richard actually sacrificed points to mess up Brady Kurtz, because he was told to pin him and mess him up, and he did it a treat and let Nick get away.
“It’s six away meetings of points-building this month, and there’s a point on the board straight away.
“We know the minimum requirement is the play-offs, but we’ll see what we can get.”
Second Half Woe
Much like their defeat at Newcastle last month, it was the second half of the meeting that saw things slip away for Glasgow – having lead by four points after heat eight when Dimitri Berge and James Sarjeant powered to a 5-1.
The Tigers’ only heat winner after that came in Morris’s heat 15 victory.
However, Glasgow will be heartened by the fact that five of their seven men won races – and the meeting saw a return to form of Kozza Smith, who brilliantly beat Sheffield legend Andre Compton by squeezing between him and the fence to win heat seven.
Next up is a trip to Plymouth tomorrow night in another crunch league encounter.
Tigers scorers: Nick Morris 11, Richard Lawson 7+1, Kozza Smith 6+1, James Sarjeant 6+1, Aaron Summers 5, Dimitri Berge 4+1, Victor Palovaara 3.