KENNETH Bjerre rounded off his best-ever British campaign – with another one-man show.
The Dane was the Readypower Panthers’ only heat winner as they went out of the Knock Out Cup in a whimper.
Even though team boss Trevor Swales had been bullish in the build-up to the semi final second leg despite the seven-point deficit, there was no sign that the Panthers would spring a major surprise.
There was no real backing for the brilliant Bjerre who finished as Peterborough out-and-out number one with yet another double figure score.
In 35 official matches over the season, Bjerre dropped below double figures only four times and scored over 100 point more than any of his teammates.
Poole, who had won at the East of England Showground on Monday night, ended any fears that they would miss out on the chance of silverware after their Elite League Grand Final defeat to Coventry, within the first four heats, building up a ten point lead.
Even though the Pocket Rocket won the opening heat, Poole’s reserves slipped straight into gear with a Heat 2 maximum and a 4-2 and 5-1 in the next two races put the tie totally beyond Peterborough’s reach.
Bjerre went on to win two of his next four races and finished with 15 points out of a maximum 18 but had very little back up.
Troy Batchelor – who beat Davey Watt, Bjarne Pedersen and Darcy Ward in his last two rides – provided some backing and Rory Schlein picked up a couple of second places in his two opening rides.
But skipper Niels-Kristian Iversen suffered a first race fall and disqualification and the only time he beat an opponent was in Heat 14 when he came over the line ahead of Poland’s Artur Mroczka who, unsurprisingly, had recovered from the illness that ruled him out of the first leg!
With Krzysztof Buczkowski, Norbert Kosciuch and number eight Craig Cook failing to beat a home rider it was virtually one-way traffic.
Swales said: “WE had a miserable night apart from Kenneth. This was a season that promised so much and didn’t deliver enough.
"We knew it was going to be a difficult task but I thought that, if we turned up, we could’ve had a real good go at it. As it was, only Kenneth rode to his potential and as a consequence we’re out of the cup.
“It was a bad way to end the season because we really haven’t done ourselves justice over the two legs, we were so inconsistent. We’ve got a long winter ahead now and we’ll see what happens.”
POOLE 58 (Chris Holder 8 (2-1-3-2), Darcy Ward 9:2 (1:1-3-3-2:1-0), Bjarne Pedersen 12:1 (3-3-3-2:1-1), Artur Mroczka 4 (1-1-1-1), Davey Watt 9 (3-3-3-0), Leon Madsen 7 (3-0-1-3), Jason Doyle 9:3 (2:1-2:1-2:1-3).