The Lakeside Hammers Management will spend Tuesday surveying the damage of last night’s defeat to Poole, their first home League setback of this season, before deciding on possible changes to the team line-up before Friday’s crucial home meeting with Play Off qualification rivals Peterborough.
The Hammers went down by three points in a last heat decider in a thrilling encounter before the cameras of Sky Sports at the Arena-Essex Raceway on Monday evening and must now regroup in order to put their top four hopes back on track.
Two controversial decisions from local official Daniel Holt played their part in the home team’s demise but with both Daniel Davidsson and Paul Hurry failing to beat an opponent the team lacked the strength in depth to see off the super strong Pirates despite some inspired riding from reserve Stuart Robson who is fast proving to the TV Speedway viewer that you don’t have to be a GP superstar to provide great entertainment.
After the meeting Hammers Co Promoter Jon Cook stated: “I think in simple terms the meeting itself was probably lost when Neil Middleditch, the Pirates Team Manager, won the toss in Heat 15 for gate positions but before that we had ample opportunity to win the match and having started slowly we showed real heart to get ourselves back into the meeting.
I didn’t agree with Mr Holt’s decisions, you would expect that of course, although I have to say I wish referees at TV matches would go with their first instinct as it’s normally right, and the moment you see replay after replay on the screen you know he is questioning his own mind and you end up with a controversial outcome. Certainly Robbo should have stayed in Heat 2 and all four back would have been a fair conclusion to Heat 7.
That said this defeat has been coming for a while now and although Robbo’s form shows you do get results for staying loyal and backing your riders it’s pretty obvious we now have to look at Daniel and Paul’s positions.”
He continued: “Changes this year have to be made on a like for like on average basis if your team is over the 40.95 average so it’s not an easy process as other teams have already found out. That said, we have identified targets that we think will not just do a job for us this year but may prove to be additions for the long term.
We are working to make those changes in time for Friday and we would hope to have at least one new rider in the line up by then. The team as it is got us where we are now in contention for the Play Offs and we have all seven current riders to thank for that. It’s a huge shame we have to change now but we warned several of the team we needed improved performances after our defeat at Coventry in early July and they have had enough meetings to respond, and to be fair both Kauko (Nieminen) and Robbo did just that.”
The Hammers face Peterborough this Friday, 6th August, at the Arena-Essex Raceway. The start time is the usual Friday time of 8pm. The ‘Kids for a Quid’ scheme will be in operation whereby children between the ages of 6 and 16 inclusive will pay just £1 to watch top quality Speedway.
