Belle Vue Aces are the visitors to Foxhall Stadium tonight (start time 7.30) for a Craven Shield fixture against the Ipswich Witches and they look likely to provide the home side with another tough test.

The Manchester-based club have had a disastrous start to the season and like the Witches have made changes to their starting line-up in an effort to avert a run of bad performances.

However, unlike Ipswich their combined team average was well below the maximum permitted and rather than swapping like for like they have been able to bring in higher average team members to bolster their suspect bottom end.

Witches co-promoter John Louis is far from happy with the authorities who unanimously voted to reduce the combined team limits to 40 points this season in an effort to reduce costs, but then after six meetings have allowed teams to strengthen up to 45.

Rumour has been rife that certain clubs have been prepared to sacrifice the Craven Shield competition to give themselves a false team average, allowing changes to be made before the league and cup competitions get under way.

Team strengths at some clubs would now appear as strong as last season and with a seventh member also included this year costs for some are also likely to be even greater.

The Aces look to be further strengthened by the inclusion of former Witch Shaun Tacey, guesting for out of form American Chris Manchester, who is required back home for an official fixture.

For the second week running Polish superstar Tomasz Gollob arrives at Ipswich celebrating a major individual success. After his victory in the opening round of the Grand Prix series two weeks ago he has won the prestigious Gold Bar event in Denmark last weekend.

Two uncharacteristic rides from the Pole in last week's single point defeat by Poole Pirates arguably cost the Witches victory. No one will be more aware of that than Gollob and he is sure to want to rattle up a hefty score tonight as the Witches look to yet back into their winning ways.

IPSWICH: Chris Louis, Brett Woodifield, Toni Svab, Tomas Topinka, Tomasz Gollob, Savalas Clouting, Jason Bunyan.

BELLE VUE: Ronnie Corroy, Andy Smith, Jimmy Nilsen, Kai Laukkanen, Jason Lyons, Shaun Tacey, Jarno Kosonen.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.