Wolverhampton Wolves chuck the lead away
Wolverhampton threw away a six-point lead with two heats to go as they were forced to settle for a 45-45 home draw against Ipswich, writes Ryan Guest.
It was a frustrating night for the Parrys International Wolves who blew the chance to seal three wins in the space of a week.
While a league point isn’t necessarily the end of the world, it was definitely two points dropped as they squandered the chance to move into the play-off positions.
“There’s been too many meetings here where we’ve lost the initiative part way through the match and we need to work on that,” said team boss Peter Adams. “There’s a lot of water that’s got to go under the bridge yet though; we still haven’t raced half of our fixtures and we have got matches in hand on all the teams around us.
“We’re certainly not chucking the towel in and we’re essentially at the start of a busy period now.
“It’s a long old season still and while this does some temporary damage, we’re still fully focussed on what we’re trying to do and what we want to achieve. We need to go to Swindon now on Thursday and get something – ideally a win.”
Wolves edged in front in the second heat when they capitalised on machinery problems for Ipswich’s reserve Edward Kennett as reserve duo Kyle Howarth and Luke Becker snatched a 5-1 maximum. Nick Morris won the re-run of heat three, doing his job as the lone Wolf well after Jacob Thorssell crashed out of the initial staging. The Swede dusted himself down to recover though and won his next outing in heat five as Morris picked up third to go six up.
That advantage was increased to eight points when Sam Masters made a quick getaway from gate two to record his only race win of the evening and Howarth worked his way by visiting skipper Danny King for another 4-2. But the visitors struck back with consecutive heat advantages and moved to within two.
Adams’ tactical switch to bring in Becker as a reserve substitute for Ryan Douglas paid off as he took the chequered flag in heat 10, but skipper Rory Schlein was unable to get by Richard Lawson.
But three-time British champion Chris Harris proved to be a thorn in Wolves’ side, winning three of the next four races – one as a tactical substitute in the penultimate race.
He then held off Schlein in heat 15 and with Thorssell only able to get second behind Lawson, the visitors snatched a draw at the death.
Wolverhampton 45: Luke Becker 10+1, Jacob Thorssell 9, Rory Schlein 8, Sam Masters 7+2, Kyle Howarth 6+1, Nick Morris 4, Ryan Douglas 1+1.
Ipswich 45: Chris Harris 12, Richard Lawson 11+1, Jake Allen 7, Edward Kennett 6+1, Krystian Pieszczek 4+1, Cameron Heeps 4, Danny King 1+1.
