It's good to be a Comets follower
Last updated 21:13, Thursday, 29 May 2008
IT’S good to be a Comets fan at the moment - joint top of the Premier League after two successive away wins.
After victory at Sheffield, Comets were 59-36 winners at Stoke 48 hours later.
Those three points carried Comets to the top of the pile alongside Somerset Rebels who had hammered Stoke at home on Friday.
For the second match in a row every Workington rider either won a race or was paid for a heat win.
Team manager Ian Thomas said: “The team - and I mean every one of them - is riding 105 per cent at the moment. They are a fearsome combination, as the last two results show.
“To score 109 points and collect six league points in two successive away meetings is pretty good going by anyone’s standards.
“We are joint top with Somerset but the hard part will be staying at the top because we have ridden more matches than anybody else.
“John took a bang in the ribs in his first race but insisted on continuing and he gave a really gutsy performance.
“Stoney also took a knock in the ribs but he scraped the arm which has had plastic surgery and that was giving some concern.
“To make matters worse he was excluded and quite a lot of people felt he shouldn’t have been.”
Thomas said that he never had any doubts that Workington would win the meeting after they went 11-7 ahead as a result of the third heat.
After five heats Workington were 20-10 clear which necessitated Stoke giving Lee Complin a tactical ride in the next.
The race was stopped after Mark Burrows went round Stonehewer on the last turn of lap one and there was a coming together on the home straight.
They went down, along with Complin, but referee Graham Flint decided the Workington rider was responsible and he was excluded.
Joe Haines had been leading at the time and he also gated well in the re-run but Burrows was first passed him on the last turn of the second lap and Complin got round at the same place a lap later.
The Stoke number one just got past his team-mate on the line when Burrows slowed for a Stoke 8-1.
But there was no panic from the Comets and they reeled off two successive 5-1’s courtesy of skipper Kauko Nieminen and Charles Wright, and then Haines and Branney.
After that Stoke never did better than a shared heat as Workington simply powered away for another outstanding win.
Stoke 36: Complin 9, Burrows 4, Barker 12, Evans 0, Sanchez 6, Jakobsen 1, Kristensen 4.
Comets 59: Nermark 14, RR for Burchett, Nieminen 12, Wright 6, Stonehewer 8, Haines 13, Branney 6.
