Peterborough Panthers staying positive ahead of a sixth attempt to break their Premiership points duck

The Crendon Panthers slipped to a second home league defeat of the season against Wolves on Thursday, when they paid the price for a disastrous start to the meeting and lost 50-40 despite a sensational six-ride maximum from Chris Harris. That made it five defeats in five meetings without even picking up a solitary bonus points and an eight-point gap to the rest of the division.Panthers track an unchanged line-up for the visit to the Black Country, which is followed up by home matches against Sheffield and Ipswich on successive Mondays.Monmore Green was the venue where Panthers suffered their only away defeat of the 2021 league campaign, when they lost out narrowly 47-43 in early August – but they then returned to win 48-42 in mid-September and 46-44 in the play-offs.Harris and Scott Nicholls have both been crowned British Champion at Monmore earlier in their careers, and Hans Andersen has often been a key figure there in league matches for his clubs.Wolves themselves had been slightly vulnerable at home this season, going down to a surprise defeat to Ipswich albeit in a meeting where they were missing two riders.But back at full strength, they produced an impressive display to beat Sheffield 54-36 last week prior to Thursday’s win at the East of England Arena, and they have the added incentive of potentially going top of the table if current leaders Ipswich lose at Belle Vue.Panthers manager Rob Lyon said: “The ironic thing is we could go to Wolves and get a result, we’ve got riders that go well round there, but we’ll have to see.“We will go with a positive frame of mind and try to put it right, that’s all we can do. We’ve just got to keep battling.“Who knows what will happen going forward, really that’s a million-dollar question. We need to focus on winning meetings, and that’s my main aim. In terms of anything else going on, I think that’s for another day.“It would be nice to get some points on the board at Wolves, and we did well there last year with the same riders, so I don’t see any reason why we can’t do that.”

WOLVERHAMPTON: Sam Masters, Steve Worrall, Luke Becker, Ryan Douglas, Nick Morris, Drew Kemp, Leon Flint.PETERBOROUGH: Michael Palm Toft, Scott Nicholls, Hans Andersen, Ulrich Ostergaard, Chris Harris, Benjamin Basso, Jordan Jenkins.