Bolt from the blue as Stars shine at the Showground

There was a bolt from the blue at the Showground as Peterborough Panthers slipped to a shock 48-42 League Cup defeat at the hands of King’s Lynn Stars on Easter Monday.

The Stars have strengthened after a disappointing 2022, but few would have foreseen them overturn the Premiership champions on their own shale.

They deserved it though even though they were made to sweat towards the end of the meeting.

Panthers were also sweating over the fitness of Michael Palm Toft who came a cropper in heat six.

Palm Toft went over the high-side at the start of the back straight and although able to walk away, he was withdrawn with concussion.

Panthers recovered an early six-point deficit with Ulrich Ostergaard and Hans Andersen taking a 5-1 over a thrusting Josh Pickering in Heat three, but the Stars skipper was to hit back and join Richard Lawson and NielsKristian Iversen in a powerful top-end trio.

Palm Toft’s crash enabled the Stars to take the first of successive 4-2s, and they made what appeared a crucial break when Lawson and Worrall took a 5-1 over Andersen and Ostergaard in Heat nine.

With Panthers eight points down, all hope appeared lost when Iversen and Thomas Jorgensen recorded a 5-1 in Heat 11 – a race which clearly should have been stopped in the early stages due to a malfunction of the tapes.

However, all four laps were completed before referee Barbara Horley ordered a re-run, and remarkably

Chris Harris and Scott Nicholls raced to a 5-1 of their own as Iversen hit mechanical trouble.

Three tense races followed with a series of close finishes as Nicholls just edged Lawson out for third place in Heat 13 and Andersen doing likewise to Lewis Kerr in the next.

That meant Panthers had a chance of salvaging a 45-45 draw and taking the match into a ‘Super Heat’ – but they needed a 5-1 in Heat 15 and it was never truly on as Iversen took control, although top scorer Harris’s pass of Pickering saw the visitors limited to three group points rather than four.

Team manager Rob Lyon was away leaving stand-in Carl Johnson to step up.

Johnson said: “At the end of the day the best team on the day won, and I’ve got no worries about saying that. We just didn’t start well enough – our gating was poor at the start of the meeting, and that’s what cost us.

“The track was slightly different with an earlier start than normal and maybe that caught us out a bit.”