On the back of the weekend's exciting knock-out cup tie victory against Peterborough, the Bees travelled to East Anglia tonight to face the Ipswich Witches, who have former Bee Morten Risager in their side.
The match started well for the Bees with a maximum heat victory in heat 1 from Chris Harris and Ben Barker, followed with successive 4-2's to the Bees in heats 2 and 3 to open up 13 points to 5 margin in the Bees favour.
However over the next 3 heats the Witches bounced back in some style recording successive 5-1 maximums to enter heat 7 20-16 up against the Bees.
Most teams could have started to doubt themselves but not the Bees who immediately drew the match level at 21 points each with a heat win from Edward Kennett and Olly Allen. Two more Bees 4-2 heat wins stretched the lead to 25-29 but again back came Ipswich in heat 10 with a 4-2 to peg the score to 29-31 going into the interval.
A drawn heat 11 followed the break before heat 12 where Olly Allen and Jordan Frampton outgated the Witches pairing to secure another maximum win and open up a 6 point margin.
However the Witches would not lie down and fought hard to score two 4-2's either side of a drawn heat 14 which meant that the match went into a last heat decider, where to salvage a draw the witches had to score a maximum heat win to tie the match at 45 each.
Heat 15 had Chris Harris and Olly Allen lining up for the Bees and whilst the Witches Polish rider Hampel took the lead, Chris and Olly initially filled the middle placings. However on lap 2 the Witches Swiderski managed to pass Olly but Chris saw out the heat to ensure that the Witches heat 4-2 gave the match an overall scoreline of Ipswich 44 Coventry 46, and in their first Elite League outing of the year Coventry took the points.
Tonights Bees scorers were:
1. Chris Harris - 3, F, 2, 2, 2 = 9
2. Ben Barker - 2*, 1, 3, 1* = 7+2
3. Oliver Allen - 3, 2*, FX, 3, 0 = 8+1
4. Edward Kennett - 1, 3, 2, 3 = 9
5. Rory Schlein - 1, 1, 3, 0 = 5
6. Jordan Frampton - 3, 0, 1, 2*, 0 = 6+1
7. Ricky Wells - 1, 0, 1 = 2