Speedway: Ipswich face a confident Wolverhampton, as they aim for play-offs
The Witches are sitting fifth in the table just outside of the play-off positions
The Ipswich Witches face Wolverhampton in the Premiership this evening at Foxhall.
The Witches have not had any league fixtures for the last two weeks and are now at the halfway stage of the campaign, sitting fifth in the table just outside of the play-off positions.
They'll be aiming for a big second half of the season to get into the top four, but face a challenge, racing against a side that has already won convincingly in Suffolk.
There is a new number one for the home team, with Emil Sayfutdinov now topping the averages, as Jason Doyle moves to number five.
Danyon Hume is back at reserve with Keynan Rew at number four and Erik Riss is at number two.
Ipswich team manager Ritchie Hawkins shared his pre-match thoughts:
“Things will look a bit different without Doyley at number one tonight with the change in the averages. Emil’s average has gone slightly above Doyley’s and there is a new look to us with a bit of a shake-up.
"A very strong pairing"
"Hopefully that will help us and whichever way round Doyley and Emil are they are obviously a very strong pairing, so in that sense it doesn’t make a massive difference.
“Keynan comes back up into the team, and he has shown he is quite capable of riding in that position, he has had a few meetings at reserve and now he needs to kick on back in the side at number four tonight.
"Danyon has had experience of riding in the team and now drops back to reserve, he needs to take advantage of that experience now. Erik should be an extremely strong number two for us.
“Wolverhampton will come to us with great confidence after their result at our place earlier on in the year. In that meeting we got ourselves in great positions and kept throwing it away right at the start of the meeting and gave them the opportunity to pounce late on.
"That is something we need to cut out this time and make sure we make every point count and don’t make so many silly errors this time.
“We are only halfway through the season and things can change very quickly after a few surprise results here and there.
"For us, we need to concentrate on winning speedway meetings, starting on Thursday."
"Winning our home meetings is important but we need to win away from home as well. We will take it one meeting at a time at the moment and make sure we get two points on the board on Thursday, that is the main and first objective.”