Leicester Lions v Sheffield Tigers

Report

LEICESTER took the honours in Monday’s opening televised Sports Insure Premiership fixture with an impressive 53-37 home win over Sheffield.

The Lions made a fast start at the Pidcock Motorcycles Arena, Beaumont Park, from which the Tigers never truly recovered with the hosts delivering a far stronger all-round display.

Grand Prix star Max Fricke led the way with 12+1 and was unbeaten until the final race where the visitors took a consolation 5-1 after Richard Lawson had been disqualified following a heavy crash with Tobiasz Musielak.

Lawson had scored 10+1 prior to that incident whilst Musielak (11+1) and Jack Holder (11) dominated the Sheffield scoring but conceded a 5-1 at the expense of Fricke and Justin Sedgmen in Heat 10.

Leicester boss Stewart Dickson said: “If you’d offered us 53 points before the meeting started, we would certainly have taken that. I had us down to win, but I didn’t have us down to win by that margin.

“But now we have Max leading from the front as a No.1, and that instils confidence right through the team, and we had a lot of race winners tonight.

“It wasn’t so much conceding a 5-1 in Heat 15 that took the shine off it a bit, it was the incident with Richard. He did look groggy afterwards.”

Holder said: “We just gave them too much of a head start.

“They were banging out of the starts early on and then a little too late, we started to climb back a little bit.”

LEICESTER 53: Max Fricke 12+1, Richard Lawson 10+1, Nick Morris 9+1, Justin Sedgmen 7+1, Chris Harris 7+1, Jake Allen 5+2, Dan Thompson 3.
SHEFFIELD 37: Tobiasz Musielak 11+1, Jack Holder 11, Lewis Kerr 6, Adam Ellis 4+1, Dan Gilkes 3, Kyle Howarth 2, David Bellego 0.

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Photo credit: RICHARD BOETTCHER