Coventry battle back to level tie

Rory Schlein won his last two heats of the evening

Coventry Bees proved their doubters wrong by battling back to frustrate Swindon Robins in their Elite League play-off semi-final.

The first leg at Brandon finished 45-45 although Swindon are still favourites to progress.

Bees trailed by 10 points at one point before Rory Schlein and Jordan Frampton had a late impact.

Schlein told BBC Coventry & Warwickshire: "We made subtle changes but I think the track came to me."

He added: "I found it difficult to get the set-up right early on in the meeting because the track changes from race to race early on.

"I felt pretty good all night just not on the ball from the word go."

Schlein top-scored for Coventry with 11 points while Frampton showed glimpses of what he's capable of on the track.

Frampton said: "I had to make up for some bad performances since I came back. I've been putting the pressure on myself quite a lot to come back and do what I was doing before I was dropped earlier in the year.

"I know I can do it it's just I over-try sometimes and that's a result of probably not scoring as much as I should have done."

Why on earth it takes us so long to make starts I don't know

Bees co-boss Peter Oakes

Team co-boss Peter Oakes said: "It was a good, fighting comeback and the greatest thing is to see Rory going out and beating two class riders in his last two rides.

"We started gating better whereas earlier we had been picking up the majority of our points from the back, but why on earth it takes us so long to make starts I don't know.

The two teams meet in the second leg in Blunsdon on Monday, 28 September with Bees needing to overcome the table-topping Robins by at least eight points because of this season's new handicap rule.