PETERBOROUGH turned in a TV horror show – to leave their fans shell-shocked.
They crashed to a shock four-point defeat at Eastbourne – despite providing ten of the 15 race winners.
Even though they went down 47-43 in a last race decider at least the top-heavy Readypower Panthers picked up what could be a valuable away point.
But it left team boss Trevor Swales furious as he saw his charges waste a hard-won six point lead.
The bare statistics told their own compelling story: four riders scored 40 points between them while the other three managed only three points.
And only one of those – scored by guest-for-the-night youngster Kyle Hughes – came at the expense of the home side.
Kenneth Bjerre was magnificent yet again and was beaten only once in his five rides in front of the Sky Sports cameras.
And that defeat came in the last race after the Eagles had won the toss for gate positions and taken the hugely advantageous one and three.
He had tremendous support from Troy Batchelor, skipper Niels-Kristian Iversen and the back-to-form Lewis Bridger on his return to his old home track.
But there were virtually pointless performances from Ulrich Østergaard and Krzysztof Buczkowski that eventually swung the match in the home side’s favour.
Panthers led from an opening Heat 1 all the way through to a controversial Heat 13 when referee Dan Holt entered the scene. A ragged start to the initial race saw him throw out skipper Iversen for tape-touching even though the replays everyone in the pits saw clearly indicated it was Joonas Kylmåkorpi who had been the initial culprit.
Kylmåkorpi was so convinced that he had been at fault that he immediately asked: “I’m out aren’t I?”
In fairness to the official three of the four riders had moved at the start but many felt the fairest decision might have been to put all four back in.
Instead, with neither reserve at the races, Iversen was re-instated but on a 15 metre handicap by manager Swales.
But to counter that Batchelor was more than a shade fortunate to escape with a third chance when he came down on the first turn of the re-run although he was clearly the meet in an Eastbourne sandwich.
The resulting 5-1 put the Sussex side in friont and they clinched their second successive home win and stretched their unbeaten Arlington record to four matches with a last heat 4-2.
Swales said: “The scores tell the story perfectly – we had the vast majority of heat winners but in 12 of the 15 races we finished last. End of story.”