TUNGATE RETURNS TO IPSWICH

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By Henry Chard

The Ipswich ‘Tru Mix’ Witches have signed Rohan Tungate as an injury replacement for Erik Riss, subject to BSPL approval.

It has been a difficult couple of weeks for the club with the German suffering a broken left ankle whilst riding for Landshut meaning he faces a period of four to six weeks on the sidelines. Tungate’s move is part of a double change with Aaron Summers coming in for the suspended Ben Barker.

The club are currently top of the Premiership and look set for the play-offs with the management having to act quickly to ensure they have a full team for the run-in.

Tungate is a club asset and has plenty of Foxhall experience having rode for the club from 2012 to 2015. The former Australian champion will make his first appearance since re-signing away at Belle Vue on Monday.

Team manager Ritchie Hawkins explained why the club has decided to bring Tungate back to Foxhall.

“Erik is going to be out for a month at least and that takes us to the end of the league season and that is quite a while,” said Hawkins. “We don’t want to be running R/R for an extended period of time, so the opportunity was there, and Rohan was available. It keeps the team very strong bringing him in and he knows the club very well being our asset. We needed to make that work, without Erik’s injury things might have been different and we certainly were not looking to change the team before then but that’s speedway. We are dealing with this 75% of meetings rule and we needed to get it sorted.

“We were at the club racing together and since he has left Ipswich he has certainly improved as a rider. He is living and is based in Poland now and is doing very well and he has a shot at getting into the Grand Prix at Glasgow later on this season. He did very well at Peterborough last time he was over here, and he is someone who knows Ipswich well. After speaking with him, he was very keen to be part of the club again, he is very good mates with Troy (Batchelor) and Doyley (Jason Doyle) and I’m sure he will want to link-up with them again. I think he keeps the top end of our team very strong.”