TIGERS WIN DELAYS PANTHERS

SHEFFIELD stunned Peterborough with a 51-39 win at the East of England Arena to leave the Premiership play-off picture still unconfirmed.

Victory for the Panthers would have taken them top and given them pick of semi-final opponents, but that issue will now not be resolved until their home match with King’s Lynn on Thursday.

And the result gives the Tigers plenty of optimism for their own campaign, as they dominated proceedings with British Champion Adam Ellis leading the way with 13 points, and his 5-1 with Jack Holder (9+2) in Heat 13 effectively confirmed victory.

Michael Palm Toft scored 13 from six rides for the Panthers, who suffered their third home defeat of the season and remain two points behind Wolverhampton.

Sheffield boss Simon Stead said: “I just feel like we’ve not quite had the rub of the green for the last few meetings, injuries upset our balance, but we’ve come back fighting and really our season starts now.

“It’s been so frustrating because I’ve felt like we’ve had the right people in, but we’ve just not all fired at the same time, and tonight has just proved what a force we can be when everything goes right.

“We’ve ridden well, there’s talk that maybe we caught Peterborough on an off-night, but we’ve ridden well and the atmosphere in the team is really good. It’s set us up really well for Sunday and the important fixtures that are coming up.”

Peterborough manager Rob Lyon said: “Sheffield came here tonight and did a job on us, there’s no doubt about that, and they deserved it. They were pretty solid all the way through, they were consistently out-trapping us, and we made it hard work for ourselves.

“But the boys are aware of it, we know where we went wrong, so we’ll get it out of the way now and re-focus for Thursday.”

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Photo credit: JEFF DAVIES