ANDERS Rowe is hoping his impressive display against Glasgow Tigers can be a sign of things to come, after a mixed start to life at Poole Pirates.

Not originally part of Poole’s septet for 2023, Rowe was drafted in on the eve of the season, following a training injury to Jack Thomas.

Prior to last week’s BSN Series final first leg against Glasgow, the Weymouth-born racer had contributed 54 points from his 12 meetings as a Pirate, coming in below his starting average of 5.08.

But Rowe shone against the Tigers, piling in 7+2 from four rides, including an impressive maximum alongside Richard Lawson to defeat Chris Harris.

Reflecting on his performance in the 62-28 rout at Wimborne Road, Rowe told the Daily Echo: “Every point counts and I just had fun really. It worked out good.

“I’ve been riding some engines here that I’ve been riding for the last couple of years in England and they’re quite old.

“I said to dad, let’s try something totally different and let’s try one of my Polish engines.

“What a pleasure it was to race. Just so nice, you could know what it was going to do. It was brilliant.”

Bournemouth Echo: Anders Rowe has had a mixed start to life at Poole Pirates

Discussing his mixed start to life at Pirates, particularly on the road, Rowe added: “I’ve had some good races and some okay ones.

“But I just struggled with some consistent engine things. Hopefully I’ve found that now and hopefully I can carry it on and just go and have some fun and race my bike.”

Team GB commitments, a call-up to feature in SGP2, as well as an injury setback whilst riding in Poland have seen Rowe miss three Poole meetings this term.

Asked if having a run of consistent meetings will help his form, Pirates’ number two said: “Exactly that. That’s the hard thing. Obviously I wanted to do the GB stuff and raced in Prague, SGP2 and did really well.

“Obviously I had my injury as well and sometimes that can’t help.

“It is what it is, that’s life and if you’re not crashing, you’re not learning. You’ve got to crash sometimes to actually go forward.”

The 21-year-old, who had ridden in each of Britain’s top two leagues in 2021 and 2022, was facing up to having no UK team place at all at the start of the year.

But now he is again riding in both divisions, snapped up by King’s Lynn Stars last month to combine with his duties for Poole.

Asked if his performance against Glasgow has set the bar for what he hopes to achieve going forwards this season, Rowe said: “Yeah definitely. Number two is really hard, but it doesn’t matter where you are, you race all the seven riders.

“I’ll take every race as it comes and just go and have fun really.”

Poole return to action in the SGB Championship on Wednesday, hosting Berwick Bandits (7.30pm).