Speedway: Change for Sheffield as Richard Lawson called into premiership final against Ipswich

Sheffield are set to rejig their line up again for the Speedway Premiership grand final first leg in Ipswich.

The club originally planned to use former British grand prix winner Chris Harris as guest in place of Tobiasz Musielak - but a switch in the date of the final's first leg, to Tuesday, means Harris is no longer available.

That means that Leicester star Richard Lawson is set to guest for the TruPlant TIgers again in Suffolk, a week after he helped the Sheffield club into the final by riding in both legs of the semi-final against Wolverhampton.

Tigers’ bosses were informed on Sunday afternoon that the fixture had been pushed back 24-hours to Tuesday due to a poor weather forecast around Foxhall Stadium.

That means Harris is unavailable for the away leg due to his Championship club Glasgow being involved in the second tier play-offs.

Robert Lambert, who finished sixth in this year's world grand prix series after this weekend's final round, and Connor Mountain, who was a member of last season's Tigers line up, will once again guest for Sheffield, in place of the injured Tai Woffinden and Claus Vissing

It will be the first ever time in British Speedway top-flight play-off history that the teams who have finished third and fourth in the regular standings have faced each other in the Grand Final – and the two have plenty of recent history.

Sheffield’s last league title came in the second tier in 2017, where they beat Ipswich to lift the trophy. And three weeks ago, Ipswich defeated the Tigers to claim the Knockout Cup – something team boss Simon Stead thinks will motivate his group even further ahead of the first leg.

“That Knockout Cup Final hurt us,” he said. “But I think from that disappointment we’ve improved and we are a better team now than when we faced Ipswich at that time.

“We may have a patched-up team but the lads who have come in have mixed really, really well with our regular riders and there’s a real determination about all of them to get the job done now.

“We will get our heads down and go again and I’m sure it will be a fantastic final over two legs. I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved as a Club since stepping up into the Premiership; we reached the semi-finals in our first year, we narrowly, narrowly missed out on the title last season, so now it’s time to go one better and win it for the very first time.”

Tigers' home leg is on Thursday at Owlerton.

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

Sheffield: Robert Lambert, Kyle Howarth, Chris Holder, Josh Pickering, Richard Lawson, Connor Mountain, Jason Edwards.