Three points in the bag for the Devils

At long last the 2022 Stellar Devils have broken their points duck in the National League with a 51-39 win over the Plymouth Centurions. The result brings the Devils level on points with the Centurions but with an inferior points difference.

Tom Woolley was a happy and relieved Devils' captain, saying "'It was a long time coming but we finally have got a win on the board and some points on the board and now we aren't the laughing stock. It was a good performance all the boys rode well and hopefully it will give us something to build on."

The target for the remaining weeks of the season for the Devils will be to avoid the wooden spoon. Their next match will be a visit to Plymouth in just over a fortnight, so that may be the key fixture.

The scorechart looks encouraging for a lot of the Devils, with solid double figure scores for Lee Complin and Tom Woolley, 8 each for Elliot Kelly and Danny Phillips and 7 for Josh Embleton. All of these won a heat at least.

Gregor Millar slowly improved and finished with a paid win, just holding off the very useful reserve Rhys Naylor in heat 14.

Plymouth actually led 9-3 after two heats, having taken a 5-1 in heat 2 in which Gregor Millar touched the tapes. He went off 15 metres as did Danny Phillips for a similar misdemeanour in heat 7. The Centurions still led by two points after taking a 5-1 in heat 8, but it was pretty clear that they were eventually going to run out of riders. They only had four scoring men.

Pleased though the Devils rightly were, it was hard not to feel sympathy for the visitors whose team was severely depleted. Kyle Bickley was a very strong guest for Dan Gilkes with a 17 point tally, so they lost nothing there, but Sam McGurk (standing in for Adam Roynon) never got to grips with the track at all. They also had to use rider replacement for injured Ben Trigger, and to top that Richard Andrews was programmed but didn't ride, which meant three 3-rider races.

Adam Extance and David Abraham did reasonably well on their Armadale debuts, but the revelation in the Plymouth ranks was Rhys Naylor who was competitive in all his heats and scored 10. He might have been deployed better and had more than 5 rides, but perhaps with two meetings to be raced today he was saving his energy.

Best moment of the day was a vintage Lee Complin pass on Kyle Bickley in heat 13, a strong inside turn taking him to the front. Kyle had his revenge in heat 15 in the fastest time of the day.

Devils deserve to enjoy the day but they have stiffer tasks ahead as they bid to move off the foot of the table.