STOKE Easy Rider Potters went down to a narrow 44-45 defeat against local rivals Buxton in the City Gearboxes National League at Loomer Road on Sunday afternoon.

The Potters got off to a decent start with a 4-2 in the opening heat but things then went disastrously wrong as the Potters as they lost both Ryan MacDonald and Shaun Tedham through injury after both riders fell leaving Buxton to take a 5-0 heat advantage and then the Hitmen extended their lead with a 4-2 in heat three after Danny Phillips fell as the hitmen gained a 4-2 as the Potters trailed 6-11 after three heats.

The Potters struck back with a 5-1 from Chris Widman and skipper Jon Armstrong over Ryan Blacklock to leave the home side trailing by a point after six heats and the Potters then got their noses in front with two successive 4-2 heat advantages putting the Potters into a 31-28 lead after ten heats.

The Hitmen bounced back though as Adam Extance and David Holt as they combined for a 5-1 over Ryan Terry-Daley to lead 36-35 after twelve heats. They extended their lead in heat fourteen with a 4-2 over Danny Phillips leaving the Potters needing a 5-1 to take victory.

The Potters came up just short though as Lee Payne took victory but Armstrong was unable to get past fellow veteran and Buxton skipper Tony Atkin who managed to hold off Armstrong and hand the Hitmen a 44-45 victory.

Potters team manager Malcolm Vasey commented “I’d like to thank the riders for their endeavours because we were up against it losing both Ryan (MacDonald) who was badly shaken up and Shaun (Tedham) who sustained a suspected broken scaphoid and we therefore had to run six heats with just one rider in. The lads fought superbly and I could not have asked anything more from them.”

Skipper Jon Armstrong said “The boys are obviously disappointed but they are still very upbeat, losing Shaun and Ryan as we did left us with one rider in six heats which was always going to make things difficult but we kept battling away. We can look back at a few incidents that went on during the meeting including my error in heat thirteen where I got out of shape and ran out wide blocking Lee Payne’s run he had to drop points there and I then didn’t get out of the start in the final race either so you could say there was a couple of mistakes there by me and Danny (Phillips) dropped it when in a points scoring position but it’s not for the lack of trying all the lads put their heart and soul into the meeting this afternoon and we just didn’t get perhaps the rewards we deserved. We will now regroup for the meeting at King’s Lynn on Friday and see what we can do.”

STOKE 44: Jon Armstrong 12+1, Lee Payne 12, Chris Widman 8, Danny Phillips 7, Ryan Terry-Daley 5+1, Ryan MacDonald 0, Shaun Tedham 0.
BUXTON 45: Tony Atkin 11, Ben Hopwood 10, David Holt 8+3, Ryan Blacklock 6+1, Adam Extance 5+1, Tom Woolley 3+1, Ben Basford 2+1.