Berwick's long trip for defeat; SPEEDWAY: SPORT SHORTS.

THE Berwick Bandits opened their Premier League account yesterday with a 59-33 defeat at the Rye House Rockets in a match where the longtravelled visitors struggled to get going until the closing stages.

Berwick Team Manager Dave Peet said: "We had a lot of problems today with Clewsy suffering electrical problems, Gino [Franchetti] had a spark plug break in his engine and that put him out of the meeting effectively.

"Rye House is a track we are never expected to to well at, but with the luck we ended up with it just made it all the worse for us - although thankfully we did get the act together at the end which saved some of our blushes.

"Hopefully we'll only suffer this sort of poor luck in one match this season and that's out of the way now so we're back on the positive trail again and looking to get a result at home tomorrow against Stoke in the Premier Knockout Cup." RYE HOUSE ROCKETS: (59) Chris Neath (Captain) 10, Linus Sundstrom 9+2, Tommy Allen - Rider replacement, Robert Mear 14+2, Joe Haines 11, Andrew Silver 7+3, Luke Bowen 8+1.

BERWICK BANDITS: (33) William Lawson 3+1, Tero Aarnio 6, Paul Clews (Captain) 5, Josef Franc 4, Michal Makovsky 11, Danny Warwick 1, Guglielmo Franchetti 3..