Eastbourne Eagles crashed to their heaviest home defeat for two years at Arlington Stadium on Saturday night.

Elite League rivals Ipswich won in a canter, 50-40, and left Eastbourne boss Jon Cook's contention that his team were live title contenders dead and buried.

It was the Sussex club's biggest reverse on their own track since Belle Vue won 53-37 in July 1999.

It was a nightmare performance by the fading champions, who must now find a magical formula to turn their season around.

Ironically, the only rider, with the exception of skipper Martin Dugard, to emerge with any credit was the man most likely to become the fall guy if Cook wields the axe.

Marcus Andersson turned in a gutsy display to finish with a paid ten points, which included one win and a brilliant ride to beat flying Pole Jarek Hampel for second place.

The Eastbourne riders were regularly beaten out of the traps and more than once contributed to their own downfall.

Not for the first time, Joonas Kylmakorpi was the weakest link, while the partnership of Dean Barker and Stefan Andersson conceded 4-2 and 5-1 heat advantages in their first two outings.

Eagles were in such disarray that they threw in a tactical substitute after six heats and then promptly blew a possible 5-1 chance when David Norris rode into the tapes.

The next race did produce a maximum, courtesy of Norris and Marcus Andersson, to reduce the arrears to two points, but that was the Sussex side's only heat advantage of the night.

Ipswich had all the answers, winning 12 of the 15 races, five of them going to the superlative Scott Nicholls, whose 15-point maximum included a hat-trick of victories over Dugard.

Nineteen-year-old Hampel won two races on his first visit to Arlington, putting some of Eastbourne's experienced riders to shame, while the middle order proved the key area.

Craig Boyce won three races, and Jeremy Doncaster, at 39, produced the ride of the night to hold off Dugard by inches on the line in a thriller.

If Eastbourne hoped to regroup during the interval break after heat ten, they were soon disillusioned, Hampel and Chris Louis racing to their second 5-1 to restore Ipswich's six-point lead.

After his earlier heroics, Marcus Andersson was dropped from heat 12 in favour of Stefan Andersson, but neither he nor Barker got anywhere near Boyce.

That left Eagles needing something special from the clash of the big guns in heat 13, but it didn't materialise, Nicholls and Louis taking a 4-2 against Dugard and Norris.