Weekend Round Up

This weekend saw a lot of teams get their first bit of Speedway action of the 2011 season.

Last week I wrote a blog about the Ipswich v Rye House meeting. It looked pretty one sided, however it was a good meeting. The Ipswich team definitely shone like most predicted, while the Rye House team was depleted with the absence of Captain Chris Neath (personal issues) and Steve Boxhall (Arm Injury). I predicted the score to be 51-39 and the final result was 56-39, pretty pleased with that! The return leg at Rye House on Saturday was a bit of a closer score line with the Rockets more on the gas round their home circuit. Rye House were still without their top 2 duo of Neath and Boxhall but had Joe Haines & Jason Doyle guesting. Ipswich were also not at full strength with Morten Risager suffering ligament damage on Thursday, witches had to use R/R. Both reserves, young Brit Jerran Hart (12 points) & young Aussie Tyson Nelson (14) top scored for their teams. It was the first time I'd seen Nelson race and it's fair to say I was impressed, everyone one has said what a great rider this kid is and how big he's going to be but you don't believe it properly until you see it, he's definitely one to keep an eye on, he's got a lot of potential, another young Aussie coming through! The final result was 49-41 to the Rockets but the Anglian cup went back to Suffolk with Ipswich winning on aggregate (97-88)

The Prince of Wales trophy took place in Newport on Saturday which saw American Ryan Fisher take the crown. Ryan has been rumoured to be in the Coventry team, so this result is encouraging for us Bees fans, he beat Niels Kristian Iversen, Leigh Lanham and Daniel Nermark to the Chequered flag in the final. Also on Saturday, Berwick entertained Newcastle at Shielfield Park, this saw Newcastle sneak an away win (43-50). Newcastle lost one of their riders before their season even started with Jason King sustaining a knee injury but Newcastle have replaced him with Czech rider Lubos Tomicek, who scored 6 points on his debut for the diamonds. These 2 teams are quite evenly matched with Newcastle just slightly winning the return leg at their home track by 5 points (49-44)

On Sunday I made a last minute decision to head to Arlington Stadium to check out Eastbourne Eagles v Poole Pirates and I think it's fair to say Eastbourne sunk the pirates ship. The Eagles were out trapping the pirates from the start, they definitely had their gating gloves on. Joonas Kylmakorpi top scored for Eastbourne and he's really starting show what an impressive heat leader he can be. Poole endured a nightmare meeting, they went into it without Darcy Ward (broken wrist and shoulder) and Rafal Dobrucki (Polish commitments) but it got worse, they lost captain Davey Watt after heat 4 after after sustaining ligament damage, then Renat Gafurov withdrew with suspected collarbone injuries so they were down to 4 riders in which their reserves played a massive part, especially new signing Dennis Andersson who top scored with 12+2 points. Most Poole fans were excited about this signing, he's new to British Speedway so some people might not be aware of his talent but he had a superb season last year especially in Sweden, so much so that he was called up to be reserve at the Swedish GP in Gothenburg and was part of Sweden's U21 World Cup team.