Speedway Premier League

Workington Comets 40, Somerset Rebels 32 - Match Abandoned after heat 12 due to track curfew – result stands

THE Somerset Rebels narrowly missed out on a league point from their visit to Workington in their final away league match of the regular Premier League season.

Whilst already assured of their place in the Championship-deciding play offs, the Rebels were hoping to take some points from this match in order to enhance their chances of finishing top of the league table ahead of those play offs.

Somerset’s match against Workington was the second meeting of a double header the Comets had that night - their first match against Glasgow was marred by a bad heat two crash suffered by Glasgow guest Chris Mills – which saw him taken to hospital by air ambulance with a broken scapula and a small bone in his back and neck.

The incident, which included extensive repairs to the safety fence caused a delay in proceedings of well over an hour, and it was not until after 9pm that the Somerset match was able to get underway.

In a close fought affair, Somerset held a narrow two-point lead after the opening three heats before the Comets hit back to open up a two-point lead of their own after the conclusion of heat six.

Despite battling hard, Somerset were unable to make any inroads on that Workington lead, which had moved out to six points following Workington’s 2nd maximum race win of the match in the re-running of heat seven - a 4-2 heat advantage to the Comets in heat 10 made the Rebels task of taking any league points away with them all the more difficult.

With the match now running perilously close Workington's track curfew time, the meeting was brought to an early conclusion after the completion of heat 12 with the home side still holding that eight point lead to give them victory and all three league points.

Somerset team manager Garry May said: "The team fought hard tonight, but it just wasn't to be, for a while it looked like we might have been able to take a point from the match, but Workington just did enough to deny us which was an obvious disappointment after coming so close.

“Having our own curfew time at the Oaktree Arena we know how careful clubs have to be in not going beyond that time and Workington did everything possible to stretch it right to the limit in order to get as many heats completed as possible, but by the end of heat 12 it became clear that they could not risk taking the match any further and so we agreed to call a halt to things at that point.”