Ipswich Witches v Sheffield Tigers

SHEFFIELD clinched the first Premiership team silverware of the season as they lifted the Knockout Cup at Ipswich on Thursday.

The Tigers took a 20-point lead to Foxhall in a repeat of last year’s Final, which had been won by the Witches, and they withstood some early pressure before securing a 45-45 draw in the second leg.

Ipswich made a strong start and had halved the aggregate deficit when they led 23-13 on the night after Heat 7, but the next five races saw Sheffield take three 5-1s with the Witches only able to respond with one.

The overall victory was mathematically secured in Heat 12 when Chris Holder split Keynan Rew and Dan Thompson, before the Tigers levelled the scores on the night across the last three races.

Josh Pickering kept up his outstanding form with 14+2 and Holder scored 11, whilst the Witches received a boost ahead of the league play-offs with Keynan Rew scoring an impressive 14.

Sheffield boss Simon Stead said: “It was another great effort from the lads. The result on Monday took a little bit of pressure off us and a lot of the hard work was done then.

“Ipswich came at us strongly early on but I always felt like the gates were in their favour to start with, so we didn’t panic because we knew that swing was coming our way.

“It’s brilliant to add yet another trophy to the cabinet and now we can start looking towards the play-offs because we want to complete that double.”

Ipswich manager Ritchie Hawkins said: “I was proud of the boys tonight; it was a mammoth task ahead of them even more so after losing Jordan (Jenkins) last night.

“They came out and put everything into it and gave us a bit of hope at the start of the meeting after starting off so well.

“It would have been easy after recent results to roll over and take another defeat and use excuses, but they didn’t. They came out and fought like you should in a Cup Final and it gives us great optimism going into the play-offs on Monday.”