Monday 15th October 2012, 23:39

Swindon skipper Hans Andersen admits his team chucked points away as they defeated Poole 51-44 in the Elite League play-off final, first leg at Blunsdon on Monday.

The Danish international top-scored on 11 paid 12 points in a meeting which saw the Robins power into an 18-point lead after nine races.

But exclusions for Dawid Lampart and Sebastian Alden in heats 11 and 14 respectively, plus falls for Troy Batchelor in races four and 13, cost the Robins vital points.

Andersen still feels Swindon have the muscle to defeat table-topping Poole in Wednesday’s second leg at Wimborne Road and win the club’s first league title since 1967.

But he believes Robins should be making the trip to Dorset with more than a seven-point cushion.

He said: “Last places were just too costly. To be fair, we threw too many points away. We had a talk before the meeting and said that one point or two is always better than trying too hard and crashing. It’s just a shame we didn’t listen to our own advice.

“It’s not over. We’ve got a second leg on Wednesday and this is going to make it a little more exciting. At the end of the day, the best team is going to win and I think that’s going to be Swindon.”

He added: “I would have liked a bigger lead. I know we won, but it feels a little bit flat at the moment after we were 18 up at one stage. Poole fought and with the riders they’ve got in the team, it was always going to be difficult. But we’re still seven up.

“We are going to be in a very good position if we can keep it close at Poole. They are strong at the end of meetings, but so are we. It’s going to be exciting. It’s definitely going to go down to heat 15.”

Poole’s world champion Chris Holder admits things were looking “bleak” for Pirates as the Robins marched off into the distance. But he feels their seven-point deficit can be overturned.

He said: “It was a bit up and down for us. We started off really badly and were 18 points down at one stage. It wasn’t looking good, but we managed to pull it back to seven points, so that’s awesome for us. We’re looking forward to Wednesday.

“It’s going to be tight, but we’ve given ourselves a chance now. If it was 10 plus points, there would be no chance. Early on I was thinking ‘what’s going on?’ Obviously we were trying, but we didn’t have much luck at the beginning, so it was quite difficult. Halfway through the meeting we had a bit of a chat and turned it around.

“It was looking bleak – it wasn’t looking good at all. We just pulled it out of the bag. We were never going to give up.

“They started off really well and they must have been thinking, ‘we’ve got this in the bag.’ But we kept chasing, things went our way a little bit and we’re a strong team towards the end of meetings.”

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