Sheffield Tigers speedway: Scott Nicholls to stand in for Tigers injured star Tobiasz Musielak at Ipswich

Former grand prix regular Nicholls is seen as an expert at riding the Suffolk track, having spent a decade in total with his hometown club over the course of his long career, and guests in place of Musielak who continues to recover from recent surgery on a broken collarbone.

Tru Plant Tigers co-promoter Damien Bates said: “It’s never nice when you hear a rider has got injured and I know Tobi will be absolutely gutted he’s missing meetings.

“I’m obviously glad the operation was successful and now he just needs a bit of recovery time.

“Hopefully we’ll see him back in a week or two fingers crossed.

“At Ipswich though we’ve got Scotty in; myself and Steady (Simon Stead – team manager) looked at our options, there were a few names we could look at but no matter where or who he rides for, Scott always seems to deliver.

“So it was a bit of a no-brainer to get him to help us out in this one, especially at a track he loves and often goes so well on.”

It’s been a perfect start to the campaign so far for the Tigers winning all three of their fixtures to date, two of which came in the league against reigning Champions Belle Vue.

But the Manchester men went to Ipswich and won last Thursday – and despite admitting their opponents have some severe top-end strength, Bates sees no reason why they can’t continue their impressive start to the year.

“Ipswich lost to Belle Vue at home last week and I’d think that was probably a bit of a shock to them, I don’t think a lot of people saw that result coming,” Bates said.

“Leicester ran them close there as well the week before so I do think Ipswich are beatable.

“But they have got the likes of Jason (Doyle) and Emil (Sayfutdinov) and when you’ve got those likes in a team, you can never predict anything because they are two class acts.”

“We have every intention of going there and getting another win though and let’s just go there and give it our best.”

IPSWICH: Jason Doyle, Keynan Rew, Danny King, Erik Riss, Emil Sayfutdinov, Danyon Hume, Joe Thompson.

SHEFFIELD: Jack Holder, Kyle Howarth, Adam Ellis, David Bellego, Scott Nicholls, Lewis Kerr, Dan Gilkes.