Reaction: Challenging night in KO Cup first leg

Poole Wessex Marine Pirates opening salvo in this year's KO Cup proved to be a night of frustration all round, with the red track lights failing, the starting tapes being temperamental necessitating the rare sight of green light starts, but the Pirates were able to prevail with a 49-40 victory, offering them a nine point first leg advantage.

The Poole promotion were keen to apologise to the crowd for the encountered delays caused by the track gremlins and Dan Ford offered a word of thanks to all supporters saying "we would like to thank the fans for their support and especially their patience on what proved to be a tough night all round. I don't think I have ever known our track lights to fail as they did tonight and I applaud the referee and the clerk of the course for working together to ensure that we could complete the meeting. I would like to assure all our patrons that we will be doing everything we possibly can to rectify these issues ahead of our meeting next week against Plymouth."

Ideally Poole were looking for a double figure score to take to Scotland next month but the resilient Monarchs kept a close ties on them and they continued to defy the Pirates from establishing a lead of such magnitude.
It took Poole three heats before they could get their noses in front, that despite Richard Lawson carrying on from where he left off on Good Friday, the last (and only) time the Pirates had ridden as a unit this season, when he recorded a maximum. Setting a storming time of 58.6 seconds he maintained his unbeaten record, beating Josh Pickering in the process. The Australian was to go even faster though in his second ride, registering the fastest time of 2024 by posting a time of 58.47 and although Lawson retained his run of race wins with victories in heats five and ten, he eventually had to give second best to Pickering when they met for a second time in heat thirteen, although two heats later they met again and Lawson avenged to come out on top by a 2 to 1 factor. He admitted afterwards that "It was a shame that I couldn't max out again but Josh is a good rider to race against and he had the beating of me in heat thirteen. We have had lots of battles in the past and only recently I denied him his maximum at Berwick so I guess he was keen to do it back to me"

Poole had a good mid-meeting spell when they scored advantages over the Monarchs between heats six and nine, including a stunning 3-2 score in heat eight, when Tobias Thomsen snatched victory on the line from Lasse Fredriksen in a two-rider heat following disqualifications for the out-of-luck Sam Hagon and the unfortunate Max James who had tried to avoid the stricken Poole man but went down. The red lights never came on and it took a message to the track staff to wave the flags to slow the two Scandinavians down.

From this point forward the decision was reached to use the tower of the disqualification lights as an indication that the referee wished to stop a race, illuminating all four as an instruction for the flags to come out. This worked perfectly in heat nine when Justin Sedgmen slid off at the first turn.

Four heats later further frustrations and delays ensued when the starting tapes mechanism proved too be far too inconsistent and so for the remaining three heat the riders were started by the green light coming on and then being switched off. By that time Poole had been checked back to a seven point lead and with heats thirteen and fourteen shared the Pirates had to dig deep in the final heat to claim a 4-2 with Brennan backing up Lawson to give themselves that slender nine point lead.

POOLE 49 ,Richard Lawson 14 (3,3,3,2,3) ,Tom Brennan 11+1 (2',2,3,3,1) ,Zach Cook 8+2 (3,1',2',2) ,Ben Cook 8+1 (2,3,2,1') ,Tobias Thomsen 4 (0,1,3,0) ,Sam Hagon 2+1 (F,1,FD,R,1') ,Max Perry 2 (2,0,RS,0)
EDINBURGH 40 ,Josh Pickering 13 (2,3,3,3,2) ,Michele Castagna 6+1 (0,2,1',3,0) ,Justin Sedgmen 6 (3,2,1,0) ,Kye Thomson 5 (1, ,0,2,2) ,Max James 4+1 (3,0,X0,0,1') ,Lasse Fredriksen 4+1 (1',0,2,1) ,Connor Coles 2 (1,1,RS,0)