PROMOTER Danny Ford insisted Pirates had no imminent plans to make team changes for the business end of the SGB Championship season – and hoped his charges would find their form when it mattered.

Poole were given a tough time of it with two meetings in the north over the past few days, losing out 49-41 at Edinburgh before salvaging a 45-45 draw from 10 points behind against bottom side Berwick.

Two points from that meeting put them four points off the top two places in the division – which would guarantee them a place in the play-off semi-finals.

Poole have now won only once in six meetings, having also ridden one more league contest than second-placed Glasgow.

Asked whether he was planning on any team changes, Ford told the Daily Echo: “We haven’t got anything planned at the minute.

“I am not going to say nothing is ever going to happen because speedway is a funny game and you need to strengthen up when you get the chance.

“But we have so much faith in this team and that is why we put this team together.

“I think we saw that at the start of the year, you know? We thought we were very strong. We are just out of form at the minute, to be honest. That’s what it comes down to.

“Form is temporary, hopefully we are going through our bad patch now and come play-offs and crunch time, we can knuckle down and start showing what we are capable of.

Asked why he felt his septet was not firing on all cylinders, the Wimborne Road chief said: “We started off the season like a house on fire, really.

“We were blowing teams out of the water left, right and centre and I thought we were probably favourites to win the league at that stage.

“I think a little bit of complacency crept in to be honest. Everyone thinking you are better than you are and I think the changes we made to our track at home didn’t necessarily help us as a team.

“Riders have been just inconsistent, you know? You even have to look at Richard Lawson, who has been one of our most consistent performers this season – he had a tough one at Edinburgh which was very unlike him.

“I think it will click at some stage, I just hope it’s sooner rather than later. Now we are coming into the tail end of the season, is where we really need to hit form.”

Ford was present for both meetings against Edinburgh and Berwick.

Assessing the battles as a whole, he said: “A mixed bag really. I felt we were good for at least a point at Edinburgh. We knew they would come on strong in the meeting.

“I thought heat 14 was probably the most vital heat of the night for us to pick something up if we were to get anything from the meeting.

“Unfortunately, they managed to get a 5-1 and the writing was on the wall at that stage. It made it very tough for us to get anything, going up against Sam Masters and Josh Pickering. They are very formidable there.

“Berwick looked to be very difficult again, things were not going our way. We were 10 points down and I was thinking ‘we have come all this way and we are going home empty handed’.

“But the boys dug deep, we knew we needed to come away with something there and the response was fantastic.

“A point would have been acceptable at that stage to salvage something but to come away with two and get the draw was beyond what I was expecting.”

He added: “Things haven’t been going our way recently. We know that. We haven’t been clicking. There has been too many inconsistencies and that’s cost us.

“And that’s the most frustrating thing. We feel and we know how good we can be.

“If we were all clicking, we are tough for anyone to beat. It has been incredibly frustrating and it kind of showed the character of this team that we can do it the tough way – we can get down to the nitty gritty when we needed to. Certainly, we needed to on Saturday.

“We still want to finish as high up the league table as we can. Being realistic, it’s unlikely we are going to finish top now, but we still want to finish as high up as we can to get the best seeding for the play-offs.”