WITCHES’ DERBY DELIGHT

IPSWICH are now six points clear at the top of the ROWE Motor Oil Premiership after beating local rivals King’s Lynn 51-39 at Foxhall.

The Witches dominated the race wins with Tom Brennan (12+1), Jason Doyle (11) and Emil Sayfutdinov (9) all taking the flag on multiple occasions.

The Suffolk outfit can now only be caught for the league leadership ahead of the play-offs by Sheffield, who they face in their final two regular matches.

Meanwhile the fifth-placed Stars battled hard with Richard Lawson (13) taking three of their four race wins on the night.

Witches boss Ritchie Hawkins said: “Another three points on the board and it felt quite a comfortable evening for us, I expected King’s Lynn to push harder to be honest.

“The boys still had more left in them if they needed it, but it is another one ticked off before a couple of meetings against Sheffield in the next couple of weeks.

“We have taken all the full set of aggregate points so far this season and we needed to get that one done after the Cup disappointment. We have done very well since then and had a good run of results, so I am happy that is done, and we can move onto bigger things now in the next few weeks.”

Stars manager Rob Lyon said: “I think heat winners told the story, we had four to their eleven, and obviously four race winners is not necessarily going to win you a meeting.

“We did well in the Cup with not too many race winners because we filled the seconds and thirds, but I think the difference for them tonight was Tom Brennan, he came to the party for them.

“So fair play to Ipswich, they always had enough in the tank, and we tried to make it as respectable as possible. We certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves with 39 points.”

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Photo credit: JEFF HIGGOTT