2014 A SEASON OF YOUTH

Defending champions Poole launched the 2014 season boasting their youngest ever team with the average age just 22 years 10 months when they went into their opening challenge fixture against Lakeside. 
 

That age was to increase by eight months when a thumb injury sustained by Darcy Ward in the New Zealand Grand Prix less than a fortnight after the Pirates first meeting, as Matt Ford sweet-talked Chris Holder into shelving his plans to give British Speedway a miss, return after that New Zealand GP and provide cover for his fellow Aussie.

Poole suffered just one defeat in Holder's eight match stint and sat joint second with King's Lynn (four points adrift of leaders Lakeside), although, one of those appearances for Holder was against Birmingham, a meeting that, along with all of Birmingham's results, was to become annulled when the Brummies were forced to shut up shop in July. The revised league table had the Pirates two points clear of Lakeside but now trailing King's Lynn by 15.

Ward's mid-May return had seen him waste no time in firing in double figure scores against Coventry on his first night back. . He went on to make a total of twelve double figure points returns (sixteen when including bonus points) before he was headline news, but for all the wrong reasons in August.

After steering the Pirates to an away  win at table topping Lynn on August 14th, Ward immediately headed off to  Latvia for GP action, a meeting scheduled for Riga on Saturday 16th August. But heavy rain in the Latvian capital forced its postponement and was hastily re-scheduled for Daugavpils the following day, where Ward was prohibited from riding due to failing an alcohol test.

Amidst all the FIM investigations surrounding the incident no action was taken immediately, outside of that meeting  and so Ward continued to ride two matches, both against Leicester, for the Pirates which ended with another five league points banked allowing the Pirates to close the gap on the Stars to just four points. But, his appearance at Leicester on August 23rd when Poole gained a draw signalled the last time he would be racing as the global overseeing body, FIM, slapped a 10-month ban on him for that Latvian misdemeanour. 

There was no Holder available to call on for Ford, or as in 2013, no Hancock because the signing deadline had passed and so the title pressing Pirates had to rely on guests to get them through. The situation was exacerbated as Przemyslaw Pawlicki had sustained a broken collarbone in that Leicester trip and in total Poole had to name twenty five guests in their final ten domestic fixtures, including four on one night when they hosted Eastbourne at Wimborne Road on September 10th, as Josh Grajczonek was on doubling up duties with Workington and Benji Compton was racing for his National League club Kent.

Nevertheless, an enthralling match against the Eagles, who themselves had four riders missing too, marred only be a hand injury sustained by popular Czech find Vaclav Milik, ended in a 56-35 Pirate victory that elevated the Dorset side to the top of the league table, level on points with King's Lynn, the league having become the much speculated two-horse race.

When Poole completed their regular league fixtures with a four point win at Leicester calling on just three guests for this one, due to the absences of Ward, Pawlicki and Milik, it left them a final total of 70 points, one clear of Lynn who had a trip to Belle Vue to complete. They would need to do that without their inspirational number one, Niels-Kristian Iversen who had been side-lined, again after the signing cut-off date, as his injury was sustained on August 30th in the Polish GP.  Lynn claimed a consolation away point from that final fixture and so, on a better points differential choice of play-off opponents fell into Poole's hands and not surprisingly, with the Norfolk side still without Iversen and the other two clubs, Coventry and Swindon both having run into some strong form over the latter weeks, the decision was to meet King's Lynn in the semi-finals. 

Winning the away leg by a single point, it seemed an eternity before the Pirates could finish the job off at home, three times the fixture was postponed but on October 16th they were able to complete the task, withstanding some very difficult track conditions caused by heavy mid-meeting rain. 

With barely time to 'dry out' the Pirates headed to Coventry the following evening for the first leg of the Grand Final and again the weather intervened but at the time of the abandonment the visiting Poole side were leading 37-34 with the result standing.

Twenty four hours later the Pirates claimed runners-up in the re-scheduled World Speedway League, losing out to the Swedish Pirates (Piraterna) with a quintet of Janowski, Przemyslaw Pawlicki (both 2014 regulars) Grzegorz Walasek, Leon Madsen and Thomas H Jonasson.

A further two days later attentions turned to whether they could place their hands firmly on their second successive Elite league title. On Wednesday night (20th May) Pirates TV will follow that second leg action.