Newcastle Diamonds 56 Plymouth Devils 39
NEWCASTLE Diamonds signed off their disastrous 2011 season, blighted by serious injury, with a win over Plymouth Devils.
The top racer all season in the Premier League, Ben Barker, shot out to win heat one ahead of Australian Mark Lemon and his skipper Derek Sneddon, the same result as heat two – a race stopped by a Mark Jones tape touching offence with the score still level 6-all.
A dominant 5-1 to Stuart Robson and race winner Jones put Newcastle into the lead for the first time, 11-7 but a win for Ricky Wells, who battled well in a tight opening bend was coupled with a third for James Cockle to reduce the Devils’ deficit to two.
A Sneddon-Lemon maximum in heat six put Newcastle 21-15 up, and inspired by the action, Claes Nedermark and James Sarjeant shot away from the tapes in heat seven to pop another 5 past the Devils moving the score on to 26-16.
Sneddon and Jones took another 5-1 over Franchetti and the excluded Cockle for being lapped as things started to look easy for the Diamonds.
Wells, on a tactical ride for shot out to lead heat nine, but a titanic effort from Robson behind saw the Diamond shoot round the American like lightening off bend four to lead and negate the doubling to only four points in the shared 4-4 holding the home advantage at 14.
That gap was 18 after another home 5-1 in heat 10 so Barker was nominated as a tactical ride in Heat 11, but with the Devils out on an 8-1 of their own Sarjeant fell on bend one of the second lap stopping the race and taking an exclusion with a three-man re-run required.
Barker, as expected took a win for six points but Nedermark, trying to get on terms with Cockle fell and remounted on bend three, and just held on to third place as Barker tried his level best to pass and lap him, but the 1-8 stood with the gap reduced by seven points, with a 3-3 following in the 12th taking the score to 44-33.
Lemon soared out in front of heat 13 pursued by Barker, but as the number one Devil angled for a pass up on bend three he got into trouble and fell, and while he remounted he was too far back to make an impression in the Newcastle 4-2.
With the match won by the home side, Barker went for glory in the final heat 15, and, finding himself behind Sneddon, went hard and wide on the same bend three he’d fallen on, and at high speed did the same thing again with his exclusion, but despite it looking a serious crash he walked unaided back to the pits.
LAST NIGHT’S SCORERS
Newcastle Diamonds: Mark Lemon 12+2, Derek Sneddon (captain) 15+2, Kyle Newman – rider replacement, Stuart Robson 10+1, Claes Nedermark 7, James Sarjeant (guest) 4+1, Mark Jones (guest) 8+3.
Plymouth Devils: Ben Barker 12, Kyle Hughes – Rider replacement, Paul Starke (guest) 5, Ben Taylor (guest) 0, Ricky Wells 11, Guglielmo Franchetti 2+1, James Cockle 9+1.
