On his first ever appearance at the Eddie Wright raceway Simon Stead powered to a win, less than a second outside the lap record. Josh Auty passed Facundo on the inside of the third bend on the second lap, but Facundo held Thomas Jorgensen off to give the Tigers an early lead. Jake Knight was very slow from the tapes in heat 2 but Damien swooped around the field and into the lead and was never troubled. Josh Bates reared exiting the second bend on the third lap and clattered into the fence. Scorpions lead heat 3 but Richard Hall dived under Michael Palm-Toft on the third turn although he couldn't get the better of Ashley Birks. David Howe rounded the field to lead heat 4 but Ricky Wells spluttered to a halt from second place. Josh Bates is withdrawn from the meeting as he's off  to hospital (must be the same nasty cough I've got). Steady wins heat 5 but Ashley and Michael deny Facundo a point so the Scorpions lead by 2 points.

Thomas and Josh Auty win heat 6 from an uninterested looking Ricky Wells. Joe Haines leads heat 7 and Richard Hall joins him and the Tigers are set for a 5-1 until Ryan Douglas falls at he back of the field. (Does he clear the track? You must be joking!) Richard beats David in the rerun but it's only a 4-2 this time. Thomas wins heat 8 from Facundo but Damien falls while in third place squandering more points. Jake Knight rounds the field and leads down the back straight of heat 9. Ricky passes him at the start of lap 2 despite all the Tigers fans shouting 'team ride'. Ashley picks him off on the third turn and Michael on the third lap, but hey - at least he got into the lead in the first place! Joe surprised us all and led heat 10. It looked good for the Tigers with Richard on his exhaust, until he tumbled off on the third turn. Scorpions lead by 6.

Ryan falls on the first turn and is excluded from heat 11. Steady led the rerun but David powers past on the back straight. Michael wins heat 12 from Jake, Joe and the exhausted Ryan. David retires (last) on the second lap of heat 13. Josh runs into the back of Simon on the last lap and falls with Simon coasting around to the finish ahead of Ricky. Simon is excluded (!) and Josh awarded the win. Richard wins heat 14 but Damien pulls up (last) on the first lap. Tigers are 7 points down so need a heat advantage to earn a point from the meeting. Simon and Richard clash on the first turn with Richard ending up under the fence. Margaret has obviously never heard of first bend bunching. (Someone tell her it's the equivalent of 'pass the slip stitch over' ;-). Simon goes it alone in the rerun and was trailing Josh when he shed a chain. Rob Godfrey nearly wets himself with the ultimate joy of beating his arch enemies. We threw points away left right and centre. On the other hand there were good signs from Facundo, Jake and Damien. When our heat leaders sort out their gremlins we could prove a lot of people very wrong in their predictions.

Rob Godfrey was on the centre green microphone. Apart from the expected heavy bias towards the Scorpions it was initially amusing listening to him getting so worked up that he garbled things faster and faster, his voice getting  higher and higher in pitch until he had to stop, sometimes mid sentence, just to calm down and catch his breath. I assure you the novelty soon wore off. You Scunthorpe supporters have my sympathy. If he's still on the mike next time we are due to visit I'll be logged onto the updates site...

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