The Lakeside Hammers, Saturday’s visitors to the Jordan Road Surfacing Stadium, were on course last season to make the play-off stage until the bottom fell out of their bid after negotiating their way into contention.
Of their remaining seven fixtures, six were away from home so perhaps it was not surprising that they fell short in the final reckoning and added to that the Hammers lost Peter Karlsson to injury in a crash at King’s Lynn during this period.
The Lakeside management have retained four of last season’s team; Peter Karlsson, Davey Watt, Lewis Bridger and Richard Lawson with the only new face in the main body of the side being Mikkel Bech. The nineteen year old was a summer signing for Plymouth and the young Dane made an immediate impact, scoring a paid thirteen against Glasgow. It was thought that Mikkel was heading to Peterborough this year until the Panthers pulled out of the Elite League and in nipped Lakeside to secure his services. At reserve they have a talented teenager in Adam Ellis and this could be the year when his race partner Ben Morley ‘comes of age.’
The Hammers have begun the 2014 campaign with three wins out of three which includes the 52-42 victory over Leicester last Friday. Lakeside made a tremendous start to the meeting and were ten points ahead after three heats. Whilst the Lions matched the home side point for point from thereon the damage had already been done. Entering the final heat Leicester needed a 5-1 to gain a consolation match point and whilst Jason Doyle won the race Peter Karlsson and Davey Watt filled the minor places to deny the Lions a point.
“We recovered well from such a poor start which shows the character in the side and had we begun the match with a few more points on the board I am sure that we would not have left Essex empty handed. We applied ourselves much better at Eastbourne which was a tricky fixture in itself and made more difficult by light rain during most of the meeting which made the top surface slippery. We were still in contention after ten heats but then the Eagles were the better team over the last third. However, we are a new team that has to get used to one another but my impression is after taking into account the last three fixtures we are close to collecting our first league points of the season and hopefully it will be on Saturday night against Lakeside” commented the Lions Promoter David Hemsley.
Teams
Leicester: 1. Jason Doyle, 2. Peter Ljung, 3. Mads Korneliussen, 4. Simon Stead, 5. Patrick Hougaard, 6. Tom Perry and 7. Max Clegg
Lakeside: 1. Peter Karlsson, 2. Richard Lawson, 3. Davey Watt, 4. Mikkel Bech, 5. Lewis Bridger, 6. Ben Morley and 7. Adam Ellis
