TEAM BOSS Carl Johnson admitted his side “weren’t at the races” in a tough defeat at Premiership leaders Belle Vue.
The Crendon Panthers lost 62-28 at the National Speedway Stadium in Manchester and also lost key man reserve Bradley Wilson-Dean with a suspected broken collarbone.
There were just two points between the sides after four races but the visitors then surrendered four successive mid-meeting 5-1s to lose all hope of gaining any points.
Then the final blow was Wilson-Dean crashing heavily on his own in the last heat and picking up the shoulder injury.
Johnson said: “It never rains but it pours as we’ve seen all day. It started badly for us and continued that way and right until the end. Then we lost poor old Bradley.
“It’s one of those meetings, we weren’t good enough on the night. I said to the boys at the interval we’ve got ourselves in this position and it’s up to you to show me you can get out of it.
“At the end of the day people will ask why a tactical wasn’t used. But why should I allow them to go out and earn extra money? They got their rides apart from Bradley and it’s just a bad night.
“I think the mindset right from the word go was tough because we’d travelled all day through rain, it didn’t stop at all until 6pm.
“I think the boys had got into their heads on the way here it was going to be a rough night, track will be terrible. I told them they can’t think like that because the track didn’t ride that bad. The Belle Vue boys made starts, we just weren’t at the races.”
Johnson insists that the side must show what they are made for the next home meeting on June 20.
He added: “We are third in the league. We are not there because we’ve been lucky, we are there because we deserve to be the same as Belle Vue deserve to be at the top.
“It’s down to us now to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves down and look forward to our next home meeting against Swindon.
“We’ve got to turn things round. Obviously it seems we have lost Bradley with a broken collarbone and that is massively disappointing. He could be out for a few weeks. Now we need to see what we can do to cover for him.”
BELLE VUE 62: Max Fricke 14+1, Steve Worrall 13+1, Kenneth Bjerre 10+1, Dimitri Berge 8+2, Ricky Wells 7+2, Dan Bewley 6+1, Jaimon Lidsey 4
PETERBOROUGH 28: Charles Wright 7+1, Bradley Wilson-Dean 6, Aaron Summers 4+1, Michael Palm Toft 4, Rohan Tungate 3, Josh Bates 2, Scott Nicholls 2 Premiership points: Belle Vue 3 Peterborough 0