WHEN I was told that I was going to be covering the speedway while our very own Andy Warren was away the first thing that crossed my mind was that I knew little about the sport.

And after three meets, to be honest my knowledge of it has only slightly increased.

Now I have covered a variety of sports during my career in journalism - football, ice hockey and cricket to name a few.

But never have I had to do two matches in one day, not even in Twenty20 cricket - the team I covered struggled in that form of the game and have never reached finals day.

So, with little knowledge of speedway and the prospect of reporting on two meets, home and away, in the space of a few hours and travelling a couple of hours between venues, I don’t mind saying that I was a little nervous to say the least.

Having found my way to the Poole’s stadium with plenty of time to spare, I set-up the live blog hoping that I wouldn’t get the stats wrong - because as long as they are right everything else is all opinion.

Now having gone to the Belle Vue Aces meet with Andy I felt that I would be able to get the scoring right at least.

There was a bumper crowd at Poole for the Good Friday but still there was a lot of pressure for me because many Robins fans who had not made the journey south and were relying on me to provide them with the all the information from the first meet.

Now I hope that I did that, I think I managed to get all the stats right, no-one has told me otherwise at least.

The meet itself, from a Swindon point of a view, was bitterly disappointing. They only managed one heat win all morning - that belonged to captain Troy Batchelor at the 10th time of asking.

I bumped into Rosco in the car park as we left and to say that he was unhappy is putting it mildly and what he said was completely unrepeatable - unsurprisingly.

Having made the journey back to Swindon, thankfully the Poole meet was a morning one and not in the evening otherwise I think I might still be on the A31 trying to enter the seaside town for the Bank Holiday weekend, I made my way to the Abbey Stadium, which was enjoying a bumper crowd, ready to do it all again.

With two meets under my belt, I was starting to feel a little more confident about what I was doing and was able to enjoy the racing a little more.

The Robins knew that they had to perform better, and they did, but ultimately it was not enough to stop it being a ‘Bad’ Friday.

Having joined the Adver in late February and being sent to cover the ice hockey I witnessed the seven successive victories in my first seven games.

And during the second Pirates meet I was told “looks like you haven’t brought the luck you brought the Wildcats.”

Hopefully that will all change on Thursday night when Eastbourne Eagles arrive at Blundson.