PIRATES NOT SO 'ECCO'-FRIENDLY!

For the second time this season the Wessex Marine Pirates have driven away from the Ecco Arena after inflicting a defeat on the gallant Redcar Bears, but this latest victory came in the most dramatic of circumstances.

A month ago the Pirates booked their place in the BSN final with a 52-38 success, but on Friday night things were much closer and the meeting even required one of the newly introduced Super Heats to determine the outright winners of this league fixture, after the scores were level over the regulation fifteen heats.

A dramatic conclusion to heat fifteen saw skipper Steve Worrall disqualified for unfair riding when he made a move to go inside Charles Wright, which, if it had been cleanly executed, would have secured a match winning 5-1 for the Pirates.

Instead, the superb Richard Lawson was the only contributing visitor, having finished well clear of the chasing pack, and the second and third places were awarded to Riss and his reserve partner Jake Mulford who had an outstanding meeting. That left the meeting scores at 45-45, which under new regulations this year, invokes a nominated riders Super Heat to determine the meeting winners.

With a league point at stake and Charles Wright making the gate in that 'extra time' race, the Poole pairing of Worrall and Lawson, who had earlier combined for a 5-1 in heat thirteen, set about trying to deny Danny King a scoring position. Whilst Worrall was doing so throughout, Lawson left things really late before edging out the former Poole skipper and under the scoring routine of 4-3-2-0 for the Super Heat, it was the Pirates who took the spoils with a 5-4 gain.

The two league points pushed Poole back to the outright top of the table, pulling two points clear of joint second Oxford with those two sides facing each other next Wednesday at  Sandy Lane.

REDCAR 45+4 - Charles Wright 13 {4} (3,3,2,3,2) ,Jake Mulford 8+3 (2',2,2',1,0,1') ,Danyon Hume 7+1 (2,0,3,2') ,Danny King 6 {0} (0,3,3,0,XE) ,Connor Bailey 5 (3,0,0,2) ,Erik Riss 5 (0,2,2,1) ,Jason Edwards 1+1 (0,0,1',RS)

POOLE 45+5 ,Richard Lawson 16+1 {2'} (3,2,3,3,2',3) ,Ben Cook 8 (2,3,1,2) ,Steve Worrall 8 {3(3,2,XE,3,XD) ,Zach Cook 5+1 (1',1,0,3) ,Kyle Newman 3+1 (1,1',0,1,0) ,Anders Rowe 3+1 (1,1',1,TS) ,Adam Roynon 2 (0,1,R,1) 

Full Report and heat details

Picture: Colin Poole