SPIRES PLEASED WITH NEWCOMERS

OXFORD manager Peter Schroeck says he took encouragement from the performances of the club’s new signings in Monday’s KO Cup defeat at King’s Lynn.

The Spires went down by 16 points to give themselves a recovery job in their home leg on Thursday, but they at least pegged the Stars after a slow start to the meeting – with Latvian youngster Francis Gusts (pictured) scoring 7+1 on his debut, and Peter Kildemand adding six.

Schroeck said: “It didn’t look so good early on, but we had a talk together and we then did much better for the rest of the meeting.

“The boys thought the King’s Lynn track was much grippier than it actually was, and it took us a while to get the set-ups right. We had some good races, while the performance of Francis was the highlight – he took a 5-1 with Maciej (Janowski) and then gave Chris Harris a real race a couple of times.

“We’d have loved to have it closer, but we certainly saw positives, in particular the performances of our incoming riders, Francis and Peter.

“It was the Bomber (Harris) show. He wanted to make a statement, which is what we expected. When you take him away, it was pretty level between the two teams.”