LEICESTER have a 50-point target when they face Ipswich on Thursday in the biggest-ever top-flight meeting at the Pidcock Motorcycles Arena, Beaumont Park (7.30pm).
The Watling JCB Lions went down by eight points in the first leg of their ROWE Motor Oil Premiership play-off semi-final at Foxhall on Monday, making a fighting comeback from 16 points down to cut the deficit in half.
That leaves the tie finely poised ahead of the return fixture on home territory, and 50 points on the night will be enough to continue the Lions’ history-making run and put them into the Grand Final against either Belle Vue or Sheffield.
A repeat of the Witches’ last visit to the East Midlands would be more than satisfactory for Leicester, who won that meeting 53-37 in mid-July with a performance that begun to mark them out as real contenders this season.
But the pressure of play-off speedway means this is a different event entirely, and Lions have little room to slip up over the 15 heats as the Witches have a lead to defend.
The teams are unchanged from Monday with the Lions once again operating rider replacement for Ryan Douglas, who is unable to return from his infected arm issue. Meanwhile Lewis Kerr once again steps in at reserve for the injured Craig Cook.
Ipswich once more bring in Jan Kvech, Tom Brennan and Ashton Boughen to make guest appearances, although manager Ritchie Hawkins has switched his riding order moving captain Danny King to No.2 with Adam Ellis going to No.5.
The Witches are without Jason Doyle and Jordan Jenkins due to injury whilst Emil Sayfutdinov made his return to racing in Poland last weekend but has been unable to travel to the UK with his medical note citing dehydration and exhaustion following Sunday’s play-off meeting for Torun, the second leg of which is in Lublin on Friday.
Lions boss Stewart Dickson says his team will be fully fired up for the occasion, and he has called on the Leicester public to back them in the largest of numbers in this massive meeting.
Dickson said: “We need the Leicester crowd more than ever to turn up in their numbers, make lots of noise, get right behind us and create that atmosphere that we know our riders feed off.
“This is a huge meeting for the club, one of the biggest in our history, and we know the rewards that lie ahead if we can score the 50 points.
“We have given ourselves a chance after Monday, we could have been facing a much larger deficit, but we are under no illusions - it is still going to be tough and Ipswich will come out firing.
“It’s a blow to be without Dougy especially at home where he wins races for fun, but he just isn’t quite ready and it’s a situation we have to deal with.
“We can cope with rider replacement but we need all six riders to be on it, and we don’t want to be suffering any more bad luck.
“Everybody worked hard as a group on Monday, it was frantic at times and there was a lot of outside noise, but we stuck our job to keep ourselves in the tie, and now we want to finish it off.”
As the club builds up the atmosphere on Thursday, there will be 120 whistles and 30 trumpets given away by Lenny The Lion at the main gate prior to the meeting.
BBC East Midlands Today will also be in attendance and will be speaking to Stewart Dickson and one of the riders at around 6.45pm.
Supporters are also reminded that end of season party tickets are on sale at the Supporters’ Club table near the main gate.
LEICESTER: Max Fricke, Richard Lawson, Sam Masters, Luke Becker, Ryan Douglas r/r, Lewis Kerr, Sam Hagon.
IPSWICH: Jan Kvech, Danny King, Keynan Rew, Tom Brennan, Adam Ellis, Ashton Boughen, Dan Thompson.
