PREVIEW: Must-win meeting for Oxford Spires

A SPELL of two meetings on successive days at Oxford Stadium commences when the OXS Oxford Spires entertain the King’s Lynn Stars in the ROWE Motor Oil Premiership at Sandy Lane on Thursday evening (7.30pm).

Oxford are currently in fifth place, one place away from the qualifying places for the end-of-season play-offs. Spires are six points behind rivals Leicester, who have made full use of a recent busy period and picked up away wins at both King’s Lynn and Birmingham.

Spires have four meetings remaining – home and away to King’s Lynn, and home and away to Leicester, and need to win them all to stand any chance of reaching the play-offs.

Spires are at full strength for the clash, while King’s Lynn are without Danish pairing Nicolai Klindt and Benjamin Basso. Norick Blodorn comes in for Klindt, while rider replacement operates for Basso.

A recent signing for King’s Lynn is Lewis Kerr, who was released by Spires at the end of June. Kerr replaces departed Pole Tobiasz Musielak, who scored 15+1 for Stars in the previous encounter between the two sides at Cowley on April 25, which Spires won by 47-43.

Spires’ team manager Peter Schroeck said: “We won’t give up our play-offs chances until it’s impossible to qualify.

“All we can do is concentrate on our own results. We know the situation and we just need to keep winning to keep ourselves in contention. In a way, it’s quite simple for the boys at the moment. They just need to get out there, enjoy themselves and win meetings.

“In speedway, you never know what’s going to happen. You only have to look at last season, where the play-offs seemed to out of reach for Ipswich. But the next moment, Leicester failed to pick up the result they needed at Peterborough and not only were Witches in the play-offs, but they almost won them.

“We will concentrate on one meeting at a time. That starts with the visit of King’s Lynn. I have no doubt that Lewi (Kerr) will want to prove a point. But with a big performance from our top five, with Ashton and Luke chipping in from reserve, we can defeat the Stars.

“We’ve then got a meeting at Leicester on Monday. We’ll just go up there with the right attitude, put it all together and aim for the victory that could turn the play-off picture upside down. But first things first and we need to make sure that we defeat King’s Lynn.”

Tickets are already on sale on the Oxford Speedway website at https://oxfordspeedway.club/tickets/

Admission is available at the early bird price of £22 for all adults, which increases to £24 on Race Day. All under-16s go free. A reminder that Oxford Speedway is online ticket sales only – tickets remain on sale on the website until the start-time of the meeting.

Tickets are also on sale for the Championship Pairs, which takes place at Oxford Stadium on Friday evening, with Scott Nicholls and Sam Masters representing the Monarch Oxford Cheetahs.

Teams:

OXS Oxford Spires: Rohan Tungate, Erik Riss, Maciej Janowski, Charles Wright, Chris Harris (C), Ashton Boughen, Luke Killeen (RS).

King’s Lynn PSH Environmental Stars: Jan Kvech, Benjmain Basso R/R, Norick Blodorn (G), Patryk Wojdylo, Niels-Kristian Iversen, Lewis Kerr, Anders Rowe (RS).

(PHOTO by Steve Edmunds)