KING’S Lynn make the short trip to leaders Ipswich for their latest ROWE Motor Oil Premiership fixture on Thursday (7.30pm).

The PSH Environmental Stars were in excellent form on Monday as they defeated Sheffield on their own circuit, but the test at Foxhall is much tougher against a Witches side who won at the AFA last week.

The recent pattern of events has been that the difficulty of covering for absent riders has been far greater on Thursdays than on Mondays, as Thursdays often feature a full programme of Premiership fixtures.

That is the case again this week with Sheffield hosting Leicester and Oxford taking on Birmingham, and the Stars find themselves in a situation where there are no top-flight riders available for their own match.

However, the good news is that the injury situation may be on the point of easing, as Benjamin Basso is due to practice in Poland on Thursday ahead of, hopefully, a return for Lynn next week.

And skipper Nicolai Klindt could also be back ahead of schedule this month with an appointment due next week which will hopefully enable him to dispense with his neck brace and make plans for a return.

That leaves the ‘no facility’ position to be addressed, which is being monitored in conjunction with the situation regarding the two Danes, and the Stars will look to take further decisions this weekend with nine fixtures to come after the Ipswich match.

At Foxhall, they bring in Simon Lambert and Lewis Kerr to guest for Tobiasz Musielak (no facility) and Klindt respectively, with rider replacement in operation for Basso, and the club thanks both riders for stepping in.

Ipswich have Scott Nicholls guesting at No.1 for the injured Jason Doyle, and are otherwise at full strength.

Stars manager Rob Lyon said: “It’s obviously going to be a really tough ask, and again we’ve been in a position of trying to find guests with Belle Vue the only team who aren’t racing.

“It’s been tricky, but we’ll do our very best and hopefully we’ll get good news first from Benjamin as he’s having a practice on Thursday, so we’ll see how he feels after that and go from there.

“We don’t have a facility for Tobiasz Musielak, which we all have opinions on, and we could argue that point all day long, but ultimately there are no riders of that quality to come in to replace him.

“With the news to come on the two injured riders, we hope to know more over the coming days on how we will go forward.”

IPSWICH: Scott Nicholls, Dan Thompson, Danny King, Adam Ellis, Emil Sayfutdinov, Keynan Rew, Jordan Jenkins.
KING’S LYNN: Simon Lambert, Niels-Kristian Iversen, Jan Kvech, Lewis Kerr, Benjamin Basso r/r, Partyk Wojdylo, Anders Rowe.