Havvy Hails Brilliant Pirates Despite League Loss to Tigers

Poole Wessex Marine Pirates missed out on an opportunity to close the gap at the top of the SGB Cab Direct Championship by suffering a narrow two point defeat at Ashfield, Glasgow on Sunday as they twice battled back from a potential double digit defeat and took the meeting into a last heat decider.

It was Zach Cook who kept the Pirates hopes of claiming two league points off second placed Glasgow alive, by opening his account as late as heat fourteen with victory by a huge margin in his mandatory third ride and afterwards he refused to accept that Glasgow is a bogey track following a mixed night of fortunes for him "I wouldn't say that Glasgow is not my favourite track. I enjoy riding here. It is just a fact that there is more to speedway than everyone sees and sometimes not everything works at once and it shows when it doesn't. I've just had two bad meetings here but I am not going to put it down to the track. Like the rest of the lads I was forever making changes to my set-up. I wasn't going out there to get last places , I was trying everything to see what works and finally I found something that worked and I was able to show what I can do there"

Speaking also of the narrow defeat, team manager Gary Havelock admitted "There is no shame in losing at home to Glasgow. In this league there are three very good sides this season, Oxford, Glasgow and ourselves and it is going to be hard for teams to get much from those places. But I thought our boys were brilliant. It was a fantastic effort. We had a slow start, the track was a little bit different to when we've been here before and it took us a few heats to get going but you know, Richard Lawson was amazing and Anders Rowe was great. It was a fantastic team effort to pull back twice from being ten points down and only lose by two. Its disappointing but it is what it was. It was a case of could have, would have should have when you look back and we had to use two riders who hadn't scored previously coming in together in heat fourteen. I suppose people will say I should have made a change earlier to get their rides out of the way but I don't regret it even in hindsight. You just look at heat one. We were on a 5-1 and Bomber [Chris Harris] came down and the re-run ended up as a 4-2 to them. You change those scores around to how it was and we would have won"

The Pirates were two points adrift going into heat fifteen, a race that was full of excitement with Richard Lawson holding off the valiant efforts of two former Pirates Ben Basso and Chris Harris. Skipper Steve Worrall was keeping Harris fully occupied and at one stage had moved into a match-levelling third place, which would have necessitated a super-heat decider. But Harris battled back to deny that extra race whilst Lawson out front kept his cool to claim his fifth unbeaten ride, all of which had followed an opening heat last place after initially being on an early 5-1 with Rowe before the race was called back. 

GLASGOW 46 ,Benjamin Basso 13 (3,2,3,3,2) ,Chris Harris 10+1 (3,2,3,1,1') ,Claus Vissing 6+2 (2',0,2',2) ,Marcin Nowak 6+1 (1,1',3,1) ,Sam Hagon 5+2 (1',3,0,0,1') ,Tom Brennan 3+1 (2',1,FD,0) ,Connor Coles 3 (2,0,1,RS) 
POOLE 44 ,Richard Lawson 12+3 (0,3,2',2',2',3) ,Steve Worrall 8 (1,3,1,3,0) ,Ben Cook 7+1 (1,3,2,1') ,Anders Rowe 7+1 (2,1,1',3) ,Kyle Newman 7 (3,0,2,0,2) ,Zach Cook 3 (0,TS,0,3) ,Adam Roynon 0 (R,R,RS,R)