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NO HAPPY RETURN
Sunday April 26, 2015
The Restart Rockets were unable to repeat their League Cup success of a month ago, leaving Peterborough this evening on the wrong end of a 55-37 Premier League defeat – although the final score-line belied the quality of the racing, particularly in the second half of the meeting.
Without Steve Boxall, Kasper Lykke and Luke Bowen, all of whom had played prominent roles in that earlier victory, the Rockets were always going to be up against it against a Panthers side that is now starting to live up to its pre-season tag as being amongst this season’s front-runners.
Any hopes that Rye had of containing their hosts appeared to evaporate at the end of the third lap of the opening race, when Robin Aspegren fell while holding a comfortable 5-1 position with Edward Kennett. The Rockets had to settle for a 3-2 from the awarded result, and Peterborough promptly responded by pumping in three straight maximum results to effectively guarantee that the match points would not be crossing the Cambridgeshire border.
Kennett carried much of the Rockets’ early workload, contributing 9 of their early points as the score reached 25-13 at Heat 6, before guest Nico Covatti stepped up a gear. With just a point to his name from his first two outings, the Argentinian-Italian suddenly fired into life to just miss out to Ulrich Ostergaard in a thrilling conclusion to Heat 7 before making amends with a race win just four laps later. Another sensational duel followed in Heat 10, with Covatti being passed by winner Richard Lawson on the very last bend, but a subsequent Heat 14 success helped take his final points total to an excellent 13.
Regular Rocket Nikolaj Busk Jakobsen also got amongst the major points after earlier battling efforts by winning Heat 13, with Kennett snatching second place from the otherwise unbeaten Ostergaard right on the line when the Dane’s throttle broke, but it proved a generally luckless evening for Robin Aspegren and Anders Mellgren.
Rye House team manager John Sampford admitted afterwards that “We knew that it was going to be tough going there without Steve Boxall and with two guests at reserve, and the sooner we can get Steve and Kasper (Lykke) back from injury the better.
“Their team (Peterborough) is doing now what we all thought they would do at the beginning of the season, although it didn’t help that we generally struggled to find the right set-ups. Early on, it felt like “Edward Kennett versus the Worldâ€, but then Nico (Covatti) came good and we started to pick up points elsewhere.â€
Rye House scorers:
Edward Kennett 13+1 (5 rides, inc 6 as a TR), Nico Covatti (guest) 13 (7), Nikolaj Busk Jakobsen 7 (5), Anders Mellgren 2+1 (4), Robin Aspegren 2+1 (5), Tom Perry (guest) 0 (4), Steve Boxall R/R
Peterborough scorers:
Brady Kurtz (guest) 13+1 (5 rides), Ulrich Ostergaard 13 (5), Simon Lambert 8+1 (4), Richard Lawson (guest) 8 (4), Lewis Blackbird 5+3 (4), Michael Palm Toft 4+2 (4), Ollie Greenwood 4+1 (4)
Match Points: Peterborough 3 Rye House 0
Picture: STEVE HONE
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