Sheffield Tigers' Premiership Grand Final glory is a title for everybody at the club, says Simon Stead

Just minutes after the last wheel crossed the line to secure a 92-88 aggregate win over Ipswich Witches to clinch a maiden Sports Insure Premiership Grand Final title, the people who had made it happen were savouring it with the people who follow them up and down the country and never stopped believing.

Simon Stead has been one of those fans, he has been a rider for the Tigers and their team manager since 2016.

The blue and yellow of Sheffield Speedway runs in his blood.

For this, their finest night, he wanted to share it with everyone.

"We went into the bar and spent it with the fans, we wanted to savour the moment with them,” he says, his voice a little hoarse from the emotion of the night before.

"We had a quick debrief in the restaurant, a few well dones, and then into the bar area to savour it with the fans.

"That’s where speedway is so unique, because the guys who are doing it are so accessible, which is unusual for other sports, and that’s a great selling point for us as a sport. It is family-orientated.

"A lad can have a poster of Jack Holder on their wall and they’ve got a chance to have that picture signed every week.”

There are seven new heroes for Sheffield fans to want a picture with now, men who probably didn’t have to buy a drink last night, or will have to for a while in the Steel City.

Chris Holder, Robert Lambert, Jye Etheridge, Chris Harris, Josh Pickering, captain Kyle Howarth and Jason Edwards all contributed points in the 15 heats on Thursday night.

Three of those were guest riders, men Stead had to call upon at the 11th hour to bolster a team ripped apart by injuries for much of the year.

"We’ve found ourselves in difficult positions at points throughout the season,” Stead tells The Yorkshire Post.

"In fairness to the management team, myself and the riders involved in the club throughout those periods there has been 100 per cent commitment to the club.”

The tale of woe could have derailed many a team.

Sheffield lost their Australian star Jack Holder to injury and then after working miracles to lure three-time world champion Tai Woffinden to come in to race for them for the month of August, the Scunthorpe-born rider ending a long spell out of British speedway to help out Sheffield, was then injured while on grand prix duty for Great Britain.

“I was thinking how many black cats have I run over because what else can go wrong?," laments Stead ruefully.

They finished third in the seven-team Premiership, two places worse than last season when they suffered heartbreak in the Grand Final against Belle Vue Aces.

Tigers also then lost to Ipswich in the two-legged final of the League Cup last month.

They rebounded by beating Wolverhampton Wolves in the Play-off semi-final, but then found themselves 18 points down in the Grand Final with Ipswich after the Witches won the first leg 54-36 in Suffolk on Tuesday night.

Yet more Grand Final heartache was staring them in the face.

For inspiration, Stead looked along Penistone Road to Hillsborough football stadium and recalled a play-off miracle of not so long ago.

"In football terms we were going in at ‘half-time’ 4-1 down, similar to what Darren Moore and Sheffield Wednesday found themselves in in the play-offs against Peterborough,” says Stead.

"It was almost, almost, unthinkable, and lots of people had written us off. But I just felt there was this belief that we could still do it.

"We were disappointed at Ipswich, there’s no hiding that, but when I started looking at the riders and as disappointed as they were, I still got a belief that they felt we could do it back at Sheffield.

"We’ve been really strong at Owlerton, it is a tough place to come and get anything from and I just felt that it wasn’t over.

"The messages started flying about in the group chat and there was a real sense that we were going to do it.

"We went about our business pretty quietly the next couple of days, reflected on what had gone on at Ipswich, but I wanted to take the focus away from that and the turn it onto what we could do at Sheffield.

"It was drilled into them that if every one of those riders did their job on the night then it certainly was achievable."

A 56-34 win on the night brought a maiden title, the magnitude of which is something still to sink in for Stead.

"I’m still working my through all the text messages, the Instagram stories, the tweets,” he said on Friday afternoon, less than a day after completing the comeback.

"It’s something very, very special for me, being a Sheffield fan, a Sheffield rider, and now team manager.

"To bring home the Premiership title in 2023 is something that is special and I am so proud to be part of what’s a fantastic club. We’re so lucky to have the stadium that we have, the landlords that we have, the management structure we have.

"Without the promoters, the backroom team and everybody involved in the club it wouldn’t work like it works, it wouldn’t be the environment that it is.

"Because they’re invested in this team as much as I am, we work well together, we build teams together and when we set out we want to win together.

"This title is a thank you to everybody involved in Sheffield Speedway, riders, management, fans, promotion; everybody.”