GREAT Britain boss Alun Rossiter is not worried about star rider Tai Woffinden ahead of this weekend’s World Cup final.

The Swindon Robins team manager was forced to come out in defence of his side after a practice session for some of his riders was blown out of proportion.

Rossiter held a behind-closed-doors practice at Belle Vue’s National Speedway Stadium on Monday but the absence of Tai Woffinden and Robert Lambert sent the Twittersphere into meltdown.

Rossiter has defended his riders, saying that the session was not compulsory and that logistics made it ‘impossible’ for the entire squad to meet up.

“I’ll make one statement on this subject, and that’s to say there’s a minority of people who need to stop making a mountain out of a molehill over this,” Rossiter told speedwaygb.co.

“We arranged a private practice session, which we were very fortunate to do in any case at the start of World Cup week, and this was to give some track time to riders should they want to test anything out behind closed doors.

“This wasn’t a compulsory session. It wasn’t a full team session. It was a case of the track being available on Monday should we want it.

“In an ideal world, yes, we’d have a full-scale practice arranged well in advance, but logistics make that impossible. We’ve had rain-offs everywhere, we have Tai (Woffinden) based in Poland, last weekend there was a major two-day meeting at Peterborough; so in reality, it wasn’t going to happen.

“I’m not remotely worried about Tai. Why should I be? He’s the reigning World Champion, he’s second in the Grand Prix at present; so it’s a complete non-issue for me that he wasn’t there on Monday.

“Our team will all be at Belle Vue on Friday to watch the race-off and they’ll all be at the official practice on Saturday. That’s when the real work takes place.

“In the meantime, I’ve told the boys they should stay off social media before the weekend.”

Hosts GB earned automatic entry into Saturday’s final – they last won a first World Cup in 2006.