Mildenhall Fen Tigers 42 Coventry Storm 48

After their 63-29 thrashing of Scunthorpe on Good Friday, Mildenhall Fen Tigers were brought down to earth as Coventry Storm took all the National League points away from West Row on Sunday.

On an afternoon when gating was at a premium on a slick surface the Fen Tigers often found themselves having to chase the points resulting in a number of errors and falls for all their considerable efforts. Only Captain Dan Halsey and always in the thick of the action reserve Connor Coles were consistently at the races, whilst Josh Bates and Jack Kingston experienced difficult afternoons with both racers having nasty spills, Kingston in particular fortunate to walk away from a frightening looking crash in Heat Eight when lifting near the start line and hitting the fence at speed.

Coventry led from the start with ex moto cross rider Luke Crang and the fast improving Oliver Greenwood always a thorn in the Fen Tigers side. Although the gap closed to four points after Heat Nine, an immediate 5-1 against the Fen Tigers from Oliver and Dan Greenwood in Heat Ten left the home side chasing their tails. From then on four shared heats left the Storm eight ahead going into Heat 15 where Dan Halsey recorded his forth Heat win of the day and guest Ben Morley tucked in for third place to prevent the visitors claiming all four points.

Club Chairman Kevin Jolly was quick to acknowledge the visitors performance –

“This was an impressive performance by Coventry, make no mistake they have a very strong top five and as I said to one of their management team, they are as a big a danger to us as Cradley.

We don’t like to offer excuses and should have done better, but losing Joe (Jacobs) was a massive blow, and then losing Brendan (Johnson) too this morning certainly didn’t help us. Joe for sure would have revelled in today’s conditions. With the weather forecast it was difficult to anything but prepare a slick track which certainly didn’t help our lads, but it was the same for both sides and Coventry were very sharp from the starts. We have to just put this down to a bad day at the office and look to move on, our team is still bedding into the season and I still have total faith in them despite this defeat.

We shouldn’t forget that we claimed four valuable points at Scunthorpe on Friday and I was very pleased with our four youngsters who all stepped up to the plate with our heat leaders being absent. We will bounce back from today and be looking to return the favour to Coventry when we visit them later in the season”.

Mildenhall 42 – 1. Morley (G) 7 (5 rides), 2. Kingston 5+1 (5), 3. Bates 4 (4), 4. R/R, 5. Halsey 14 (6), 6. Mountain 3 (3), 7. Coles 9+4 (7)

Coventry 48 - 1. Nielsen 7+3 (4), 2. Crang 10+1 (5), 3. O. Greenwood 12(5), 4. D.Greenwood 6+2 (4), 5. Sarjeant 8 (4), 6. Terry-Daley 5 + 1 (5), 7. Knuckey 0 (3)