KING’S Lynn faded in the closing stages as title favourites Sheffield pulled off a 49-41 victory at the Adrian Flux Arena.

The Minors & Brady Stars saw an early six-point lead disappear, with spectacular Pole Tobiasz Musielak and skipper Kyle Howarth doing most of the damage for the Tigers in a strong middle-order combination.

For Lynn it was a second successive home defeat, and as in a number of their recent meetings, they were left feeling they should have achieved more.

Stars made a flying start to the contest, aided by both Sheffield riders being disqualified from the opening race, with Jack Holder falling and Craig Cook failing to beat the time allowance.

Cook took only one further ride before withdrawing from the meeting and an early six-point lead for Lynn was quickly whittled back with race wins for Musielak and Adam Ellis.

Thomas Jorgensen took a fine win over Holder in Heat 5 to give the Stars a four-point advantage, but the Tigers were working their way into the match and it took a strong ride from skipper Josh Pickering to split Musielak and Howarth in Heat 7.

Even so, Sheffield levelled up in Heat 8 and although Lynn briefly edged back ahead, a big 5-1 from the Musielak/Howarth pairing over Richard Lawson and Lewis Kerr in Heat 10 took the visitors into the lead for the first time.

Richie Worrall won Heat 11 but Pickering was a retirement, and the Stars were then frustrated by a superb ride from Musielak in a long-running Heat 12 as he passed both Worrall and guest Nick Morris for his third successive win.

Pickering kept Lynn in the meeting with a magnificent effort to pass Holder on the last bend of Heat 13 having earlier overtaken Ellis, but they still trailed by two points.

And their problems increased when the impressive Howarth overhauled Worrall in Heat 14 with ex-Stars man Connor Mountain finishing ahead of Jorgensen for the vital third place.

That meant only a 5-1 in Heat 15 would do for the Stars to tee up a Super Heat from a 45-45 draw, but there was to be no escape as Musielak and Holder combined for a maximum 5-1 of their own against Pickering and Lawson, giving Sheffield all four available league points.

Manager Alex Brady said: “The track changed a little bit and we didn’t adapt quickly enough, or we made changes that were perhaps a little unnecessary I felt.

“It’s disappointing. I hate losing, and that’s now two in a row at home, and taking into consideration the Pairs at Ipswich last week it’s now four in a row that we’ve not performed as well as we want to.

“We will re-group and we will come back stronger, and hopefully we can do it a week on Monday at Peterborough.

“Niels (Iversen) could be available by the end of July/early August, but I personally feel we need to do something sooner, because we’re in danger of things slipping away if we don’t.

“I’ve been putting a lot of hours in, a lot of phone calls, and there are possibly some options out there, and hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Thursday’s reverse leaves the Stars in urgent need of away wins to resurrect their play-off bid, and their first opportunity to do that comes when they visit Peterborough a week on Monday (July 4).

KING’S LYNN 41: Richie Worrall 9+1, Josh Pickering 8, Nick Morris 8, Richard Lawson 6, Lewis Kerr 5+2, Thomas Jorgensen 4, Jason Edwards 1.
SHEFFIELD 49: Tobiasz Musielak 13, Kyle Howarth 12+1, Adam Ellis 9+1, Jack Holder 8+1, Connor Mountain 4+1, Jake Allen 3, Craig Cook 0.
Premiership points: King’s Lynn 0 Sheffield 4