Speedway: Sheffield take first half play-offs lead as Fricke and Holder star against Leicester
Tigers will take a 24 point lead to Leicester for the second leg ‘but must start from scratch again’
Aussies Max Fricke and Chris Holder starred for Sheffield as Tigers gave themselves the advantage after the first leg of their Rowe Motor Oil Premiership play-offs semi final against Leicester.
But Holder admitted Tigers would be taking nothing for granted, having themselves overturned a big first leg lead in the 2023 grand final.
Fricke, guesting for Tigers against his former club, got off to a winning start in heat one, and went on to notch a 15 point maximum from his five rides.
And Holder, celebrating his 39th birthday with an engine he had brought over from Poland, produced his best rides in weeks, including a text book display of team riding with reserve Jye Etheridge, who also enjoyed one of his best nights of the season.
Holder felt things had gone well, and observed that Leicester had always been a rough team for Sheffield, knocking them out of the KO Cup this season and the play offs in 2025.
“They always seem to run us really close and they’ve beaten us here a couple of times,” he said. “To win by the margin that we won tonight was really good and it gives us a good chance when we go down to Leicester next week.”
He said for the second leg they would have to start from scratch again, but it was good to have a good lead. “Not that we’re going to be looking at it too much,” he added.”It’s only half way so they’re just as capable of doing what we did tonight at their place, so we need to be ready to go from the first heat at Leicester - and we want to win the meeting too and stay on some good form.”
Of his performance on the night, a paid 11, he said: “I’ve just been trying to find a good set up with engines and stuff like that, and I brought an engine back over from Poland that I used earlier on in the year, so we bolted it in today and it worked, so that will stay here.”
He also had praise for reserves Jye Etheridge and Luke Killeen, both of whom he felt have been really good the last month and a half.
“I think Luke may have struggled a bit today,” he said. “But the last few weeks they’ve been scoring big points for us and and making up for the points I hadn’t scored and a couple of others. Jye rode unreal tonight, and we got that good win in heat 12 that gave us a bit of a buffer in the points.”
Tigers led from the start, after Fricke and Anders Rowe had claimed a 5-1 in heat one, with Rowe out of the gate quickly, and finishing second to Fricke.
But it took until heat six for Tigers to extend their lead, when Fricke and Rowe combined again, Fricke winning the heat by a distance, and Rowe taking third, just behind the Lions Nick Morris.
But in the second half of the meeting, Tigers started to extend their lead, with heat advantages in six of the last eight races.
Among the highlights of the action was a dramatic last bend overtake by skipper Josh Pickering to secure a 3-3 in heat 11, finding a way past Leicester’s Ryan Douglas on the inside; and another manoeuvre by Pickering in heat 15, which saw him find a way through both Sam Masters and Nick Morris to move from last to second on the third bend of lap one, to take second place behind Fricke in a 5-1.
Sheffield 57: Max Fricke 15, Chris Holder 10+1, Jye Etheridge 9, Josh Pickering 7+3, Anders Rowe 7+1, Leon Flint 6+2, , Luke Killeen 3
Leicester 33: Sam Masters 10, Nick Morris 8, Drew Kemp 6+1, Ryan Douglas 4+2, Dan Thompson 2, Jody Scott 2, Joe Thompson 1+1.