Newcastle Stadium, Premier League
Newcastle's Sapphire Engineering Diamonds went into last night's Premier League encounter at the Newcastle Stadium against the Plymouth Devils with one aim in mind, a big confidence-boosting win had to be achieved.
But in a bizarre Heat One Plymouth's Craig Cook and reserve Kyle Hughes shot out from the gate to lead but in an attempt to pass the man in second, fell on bend one of the last lap, stopping the race with his exclusion and an awarded away maximum, 1-5 to the Devils.
An error from the leading Kyle Newman in Heat Two allowed the chasing Hughes through to nab the three points in a shared race, maintaining Plymouth's four point lead.
Jason King's form finally returned with a great tapes-to-flag win in Heat Three over the hard-chasing Dane, Jesper Kristiansen in a home 4-2 to tighten the meeting to 8-10, and with a dominant 5-1 in the fourth from Claes Nedermark and Richie Worrall over the experienced Jason Bunyan to push the home side into the lead, 13-11.
Heat six came to a crashing early finish when guest Jason Lyons hit a soft patch on the tight inside line on bend one which straightened him up and sent him unavoidably into his partner Sneddon with both hitting the fence but the skipper's bike bounced hard into the stricken Australian who required several minutes of medical attention before thankfully walking back to the pits.
In the re-run, Sneddon took the easy win to move the score on to 19-17, whilst in Heat Seven Nedermark and Newman blocked out the challenge of Kristiansen early to ensure a solid home 5-1, followed up by a 4-2 with a second win from the captain to push Newcastle's lead to 28-20.
With the Diamonds 37-23 up Plymouth nominated Cook as the tactical rider in Heat 11 and he duly rode the perfect race for his six points in the 2-7 to haul his side back into the mix at 39-30.
With three races left the nine point gap was extended in the 13th with a home maximum whilst a re-started Heat 14 saw Kenny Ingalls crash out at the first attempt and Newman grind to a halt when he shed a chain on the first lap leaving the heat result at 2-3, leaving Newcastle in an unreachable lead of 49-37 with one race remaining.
Team manager George English said: "People expected us to take Plymouth apart tonight, but they proved a tougher prospect than anticipated and they certainly adapted to the tricky surface left after torrential overnight rain better than we did, but congratulations to them as they deserve a lot of credit for the spirited show they put on.
"From our point of view it was fantastic to see Jason King get a win and a good points return - his confidence has taken a real boost tonight."
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