Eastbourne Eagles came crashing back to earth after their victory at Coventry on Wedn-esday with a crushing 58-32 defeat at Ipswich.

The Eastbourne side, still challenging with confidence for the Elite League title made a disastrous start conceding two five-ones and a five-nil in the first three heats.

The Ipswich riders were quite simply too fast from the gate in almost all the races and despite the efforts of skipper Martin Dugard with two race wins, the Eastbourne side were never in the hunt.

Ipswich, using two guests in Shaun Casey and Nigel Sadler were just too good.

Joe Screen, who had led the victory at Coventry, was involved in controversy after he clashed with Sadler at the end of heat six appearing to pull Sadler's throttle cable as the two finished.

He was certainly not flavour of the month in Suffolk and despite his efforts as a golden tactical substitute in heat 12, he had no answer.

The Eagles had only four heat winners all night, captain Dugard with two of them, and only a heat nine five-one maximum by David Norris and Screen gave the away fans anything to cheer about.

In fact that was as close as Eastbourne got to Ipswich, trailing by just nine after heat nine, but it was the Witches who turned the heat on again, slamming home heat advantages in the final six races.

Promoter John Cook will no doubt be disappointed with the way it went for the Sussex side and even the bonus point must be in doubt when Ipswich come to Arlington in the middle of August.

Ipswich: C.Louis 13, T.Gollob 12, N.Sadler 9, M.Ferjan 9, S.Tacey 8, J.Doncaster 7.

Eastbourne: J.Screen 10, M.Dugard 10, D.Norris 6, D.Barker 4, T.Kokko 2, B.Collyer 0.