The Newcastle Diamonds struggled to impress at Scunthorpe on Friday night as they went down by 20 points in the League.

Diamond's top man on a night generally to file under forgotten, was the Czech Republican guest, Tomas Topinka of King's Lynn who was filling in for Josef Franc, Newcastle's own Czech who's away on European Championship in Hungary.

Topinka rode superbly well to top score with 18 extremely well won points including four wins and a tactical ride second for four points, Heat five a typical example of his performance when he shot round both Magnus Karlsson and Benji Compton on the second bend to lead by a proverbial country mile.

Highlights were a rare delicacy, but Heat 14 provided a win for the only other Diamond to take 3 points all night when Jason King took a fine gate to lead early and win with his partner, Sean Stoddart holding out reserve Viktor Bergstrom behind in a rare but very welcome Newcastle maximum heat win.

That aside it was another very disappointing night for the majority of the Tyneside team with Skipper Christian Henry finding the track decidedly troublesome for his four points and a fall in Heat 13 on the second bend leaving the win to Topinka who fended off Richard Hall in an enthralling four laps.

Newcastle Team manager George English said: "This was not what we expected, not by a long way although I can't praise the extraordinary efforts from Tomas Topinka who rode his heart and soul out for us as out guest tonight.

"This is another night to forget, and now has got to be the time to concentrate on improvement, although when we can eventually get George Stancl back in action all the better as we miss his power very badly."

Scunthorpe Scorpions 56
Andrew Moore 0,2*,3,1* = 6+2
Carl Wilkinson 2,3,3,1 = 9
Magnus Karlsson 3,2,3,3,2 = 13
Benji Compton 1,1*,2*,0 = 4+2
Richard Hall 3,3,3,2,0 = 11
Viktor Bergstrom 3,R,1,1 = 5
Byron Bekker 2*,2*,2*,2* = 8+4 

Newcastle "Sapphire Engineering" Diamonds 36
Tomas Topinka (guest) 3,3,4^,2,3,3 = 18
Daniel Giffard (Guest) 1,0,0,0 = 1
George Stancl - Rider Replacement
Jason King 2,2,0,0,3,1 = 8
Christian Henry 1,1,1*,1,Fx = 4+1
Jamie Robertson ® R,0,0,N = 0
Sean Stoddart ® 1,0,1,0,1,2*  = 5+1