April has been a difficult month for us as a team and it’s been drawn out as there hasn’t been a lot of consistency in meetings. We’ve had big gaps and not had many meetings in a row and I don’t think that helps. However, I’m sure we’re not the only team in that position.
It was very disappointing to go out of the League Cup and we’ve got the Knockout Cup this month now and we can’t afford to go out of that so we’ve got to work hard to get a result and do a job at Rye House on Saturday. May is also an important month for us to get going in the Premier League and we face opposition that we believe we can take points from. We need to all step up and do our jobs that we’ve been employed to do.
The spirit within the team is as good as it can be. Obviously it’s difficult when you’re losing, certainly your home meetings. That considered, the mood is good and we are keeping positive which you need to do and it shows a lot of strength. Hopefully we will show that strength over the coming month.
My form has been so -so really. At times I’ve been disappointed with it and I’ve not started as consistently as I would have liked but I feel like I’m getting somewhere now that is of a similar level to where I was last year so I’m pleased with that.
In my role as captain I try and get the boys as relaxed as possible and if I can go out and win heat one and give them a bit of feedback then they can maybe relax a bit and take on board what I say and push on as the meeting goes on. As I say though it’s difficult when you haven’t been riding and the gaps don’t help.
I’m not 100% percent sure yet what is going on with my British Semi-Final at Glasgow. I was scheduled to ride in the Glasgow semi-final on Sunday (15th) but I’m in Abensburg in Germany for a Grand Prix qualifier so I can’t do the meeting at Glasgow. That leaves me hoping to get one of the wildcards to the British Final. I made it aware that I could do the meeting at Scunthorpe on the Friday (13th) but they have said they can’t change it now so the only option I can see is them seeding me straight through to the Final.
As I have just mentioned I have a Grand Prix qualifier in Germany this month. It’s a very tough qualification process, you go through all of these qualifying rounds and only three get in the final series for 2017! This is a step towards that though and this is the first stage and we are going there confident and hopefully we can get through to the semi-finals.
Away from the track I’ve become a Daddy again which is fantastic. It’s been great and it’s been nice to have a bit of family time and forget about speedway for a while. It’s made me feel a bit more relaxed and I enjoyed my racing on Monday (9th) at Coventry against Wolves and hopefully I can carry that on now and push on.
It’s tough juggling speedway and family life at the moment. It wasn’t as bad before because my first lad is two-and- a- half now and is sleeping all night now so he is giving me plenty of rest but we are back to the broken sleep again now! Its good though and I try and get a bit of rest when I can and the wife is good and lets me sleep!
All the best,
Danny