Speedway: Sheffield Tigers confident over Cup mission

The Tigers dominated the Northern group last season but have this year been placed alongside Peterborough, Ipswich and Scunthorpe in a Midlands section. After two challenge matches with Elite League Leicester, Tigers will face their six League Cup fixtures to kick-off their campaign.

Bates is confident they can progress and he hopes the League Cup will also enable the new signings to get up to speed when they launch their Premier League campaign at Ipswich on April 23.

Bates said: “We are looking forward to our meetings against Leicester to start the season I think they’ll be quite evenly matched meetings. It will be a good opener for our team and the fans to see an Elite League team at Owlerton and hopefully we will give them a good meeting to get ourselves warmed up for the season. We’ve got a tough group in the League Cup with some big meetings but we are confident we can beat anybody at Sheffield and we’ll try to pick up enough points away from home as well.

“In the first couple of League Cup home matches we’ll be missing Jason Garrity because of fixture clashes with Coventry, but we are already working on getting in good guests so we aren’t under strength. They are the only clashes we have, so we’ll get those out of the way earlier and shouldn’t have to worry about being without him for any meetings then.

“We want to win every competition, but the Premier League is obviously the big one and so we are pleased we will have Jason for all those meetings. Our Premier League fixtures don’t start until the end of April, so hopefully by then our new riders will have got themselves sorted around Owlerton.”