REACTION: PIRATES CLAIM WIN IN SCOTLAND ON FIRST LEG OF NORTHERN TOUR

The Poole 'Wessex Marine' Pirates rode their luck, accepting a few gifted points from the Edinburgh Monarchs on the way, but held out in the closing stages of a nip and tuck meeting to put a further two league points on the board with a 48-42 victory in Scotland.
 

It proved to be a winning start to their two-leg Northern tour which moves to Berwick on Saturday, which pleased team manager Gary Havelock as he took his first look atthe Poole one-to-seven he manages at the northern venues. "I'm over the moon" admitted a smiling Havelock after Richard Lawson and Anders Rowe had sealed the victory with a closing 5-1, "it was a fabulous performance especially when they have a free-flowing reserve like they have."

"It's always difficult when you have a strong reserve. Don't get me wrong, I think we got at least three or four slices of luck tonight which you don't normally get all in one meeting, but I will take that every day of the week you know, and I know that we will have equal measures of bad luck to cancel that out over the season. But, in the end we had the advantage going into heat fifteen and also had the choice of gates as we won the toss at the start of the meeting and decided we would defer the choice for the final heat, which proved to be the right thing. So I just said look, Rich (Richard Lawson) I want you off one and I want you to just get out the start get your head down and go on and win the race and that's it, that's the points in the bag. Then Anders just managed to pop off three and be there with him which was fabulous and it looked in the end like a much more comfortable win than it actually was."

Anders himself admitted "it was tough out there tonight. To start with, the track sort of caught us out. It looked pretty grippy but it was quite greasy so personally I went too high on the sprockets then started to tweak it and then we had the sun delay and things like that, which can't be helped, you know. Luckily we managed to get it going in the end and finish heat fifteen off with a 5-1 so all good. I made another little change in heat fifteen and it worked and maybe I had a little bit more speed than Richard but he made a very good start and so it was good."

Poole's first stroke of fortune came as early as heat one when Kye Thomson packed up when in second place with the Monarchs heading for a 5-1 and then in heat seven Oskar Polis pulled up at the end of the first lap when again on a 5-1. Polis was forced to withdraw from the meeting with a wrist injury but Edinburgh had more than adequate cover with their flying reserve Victor Palovara who scored a massive 19 points from a full quota of seven rides. Making the starts from virtually anywhere on the grid, the Swede only dropped points in heat eleven when Lawson and Tobias Thomsen held him out to give the Pirates a lead-taking 5-1 from which they never looked back.

 EDINBURGH 42 ,Victor Palovaara 19 (3,3,3,1,3,3,3) ,Justin Sedgmen 8+1 (3,3,1',0,1) ,Michele Castagna 6 (3,R,3,FD) ,Kye Thomson 4 (R,1,1,2,0) ,Oskar Polis 3 (3,R,NS,NS) ,Dayle Wood 1 (1,0,RS,FD) ,Jonatan Grahn 1 (0,1,0,0,RS) ,

POOLE 48 ,Richard Lawson 13 (2,3,3,2,3) ,Anders Rowe 11+1 (2,2,3,2,2') ,Tobias Thomsen 7+3 (1',2',2,2') ,Lewis Kerr 6+2 (1',2,2,1') ,Paul Starke 5+3 (2,0,1',1',1') ,Zach Cook 4+2 (1',1',0,2) ,Darryl Ritchings 2 (R,2,0,RS)