PREVIEW: KING’S LYNN v LEICESTER (PREM KO CUP FINAL)

KING’S Lynn and Leicester contest the first major Premiership team silverware of the season as the KO Cup Final gets underway tonight (Monday).

The Stars host the first leg at the Adrian Flux Arena having dramatically overcome Ipswich in the semis, with the Lions staging the decider on Thursday. They made it through against Sheffield, where they also won in the league last week.

King’s Lynn welcome back Niels-Kristian Iversen after a rib injury and he lines up at No.1, whilst Lewis Kerr again guests for Ben Cook. Leicester have called in Tom Brennan to guest for the injured Luke Becker.

Stars manager Rob Lyon said: “We won’t be putting a number on what we want to do, as I don’t want to put pressure on everyone to achieve a certain figure.

“Ultimately we’ve got to score as well as we can in both matches, so we’ll see how we come out of things on Monday and then go to Leicester and do what we need to do.

“You can say 6, 10, 12, 14 points, but it will be what it will be. We had six points going to Ipswich and we managed to draw there, so I wouldn’t want to put any predictions on what we need ideally.

“This team is full of surprises and I do think we’ve shocked a few people in the past few weeks, so there’s no reason why we can’t do that again.”

Lions boss Stewart Dickson said: “It’s a real opportunity to bring silverware to the club, but I’m sure King’s Lynn will be thinking the same thing, and I think it looks a good, evenly matched tie.

“The first job is to keep the tie alive at King’s Lynn, and again that needs everyone doing their bit. I think it’s fair to say a lot of my riders at the top end get a lot of praise from me, but it was our reserves Drew Kemp and Joe Thompson who won us the meeting at Sheffield.

“That highlighted the sort of performances we are putting in, and we will need to put in this week if we’re going to try and win this Knockout Cup.”

KING’S LYNN: Niels-Kristian Iversen, Richard Lawson, Chris Harris, Lewis Kerr, Jan Kvech, Nicolai Klindt, Luke Harrison.
LEICESTER: Max Fricke, Tom Brennan, Ryan Douglas, Kyle Howarth, Sam Masters, Drew Kemp, Joe Thompson.

SCB Referee: Seth Perkin

*LIVE STREAMING: https://watch.britishspeedway.co.uk