SHEFFIELD team boss Simon Stead was left cursing bad luck as Tigers suffered a frustrating defeat at Somerset.

The Tigers went down 49-41 at the Oak Tree Arena on a night when simply everything went wrong for the visitors.

The Owlerton side were dogged with mechanical gremlins and controversial tapes exclusions all night as they eventually went down by eight points.

Stead said: “It’s been known a while at Somerset that the starts aren’t going up straight the inside quicker than the outside, so I asked the ref to keep a look out.

“But he didn’t see this because he’s looking across the tapes, but it was evident from behind.

“The ref then tells me to tell our boys to stay still. But I told him I don’t believe they're jumping the starts, it’s just because it looks that way because the tapes are going up quicker.

“TK made a perfectly good start and then was excluded. From then on we didn’t get a rub of green, Justin Sedgmen blew his bike to bits, Danny King pulled up on a 5-1 because he thought he’d seen a red light to stop the race.

“You honestly couldn’t make it up. If we had any luck at all, it was just bad. It was one of those nights where everything went wrong.

“The only consolation is that we had loads of Tigers fans giving us great support. They will have seen that we deserved something from this match.

“It’s a particularly tough one to swallow because I felt we were going to get something at least. I feel for the younger lads, they all did great tonight.

The teams swapped the lead before it stayed level until Heat 9 when the home side scored a 5-1 after Howarth had touched the tapes.

Then Schlein and Nick Morris rubbed salt into the wounds with a final race maximum to stop Tigers taking anything at all.

Somerset 49: Rory Schlein 15, Nick Morris 11+1, Chris Harris 9+1, Nico Covatti 8+2, Anders Rowe 4+1, Luke Harris 1, Nathan Stoneman 1.
Sheffield 41: Drew Kemp 7+2, Kyle Howarth 7, Zaine Kennedy 6+2, Josh MacDonald 6+1, Danny King 6, Todd Kurtz 6, Justin Sedgmen 3+1.