Eastbourne Eagles slumped to their third defeat in six days when Poole Pirates plundered a 46-43 win at Arlington Stadium on Saturday night.

Exciting it was. Incident-packed certainly. But the club's fans will be asking serious questions about the current team after seeing them throw away two valuable Elite League points to their South Coast rivals.

Eight points up after three races. Gifted a 5-0 which sent them past halfway in the match nine points to the good. And faced by a Poole side with two reserves who failed to win a point all night. Yet Eagles somehow still contrived to finish second best.

No one expected Eastbourne to get much change out of Leigh Adams and Tony Rickardsson and the Pirates big guns duly obliged with a smooth as silk one-two in the last-heat decider.

All the damage was done before that, though, with a catalogue of inept efforts from the riders charged with the responsibility of spearheading the Sussex squad's bid for a championship play-off place.

The injury to Mark Loram is not a valid excuse, although once again at home Eagles found themselves out of pocket with guest Jason Lyons picking up just four points.

Eagles scored only four wins in 15 races, none of them achieved by one of their heat leaders, and coming on the back of heavy defeats at Poole and Peterborough the statistics make sorry reading.

In the three matches, Eastbourne provided only 12 winners in 45 heats, four of those by guest riders, five if you count Gary Stead as a guest.

Joe Screen, David Norris and Dean Barker, the club's three main riders bar Loram, managed two wins between them in 38 rides, both by Barker. Screen, the skipper, and Norris have both gone 13 races without winning one, and there lies the rub.

One win, or perhaps two, would have made the difference on Saturday and Eastbourne had plenty of chances.

Lukas Dryml and Bjarne Pedersen, who had looked totally ineffective in ten previous races this season round the tight Arlington turns, suddenly exploded into race-winning mode.

Pedersen came from the back to catch Screen napping on the last bend, then both the Poole riders beat Barker and Lyons when Eagles should have been nailed on for a 5-1 of their own, and Dryml won again from Adam Shields and Norris.

The Dryml-Pedersen one-two was the middle leg in a hat-trick of 5-1 heat wins for the visitors between nine and 11 which turned the match on its head.

It all seemed to be going Eastbourne's way when first Krzysztof Kasprzak came down and then David Ruud turned the screw too far while leading heat eight, presenting Barker and Stead with a 5-0.

Earlier Eagles had got off to a flyer with 5-1s in two of the first three heats, first via Stead and Shields, then Joonas Kylmakorpi and Norris, but it was a false dawn for the home side.

Adams, who won six out of six to take his tally to 19 races without being beaten by an Eastbourne rider in four matches this season, and Rickardsson went on their merry way, the only blip being an argument with the fence in heat 13 which dented Rickardsson's paid maximum.

Adams equalled Rickardsson's track record in the opening race in 55.2sec. Rickardsson lowered it by another tenth of a second with 55.1sec. on his first appearance in heat four.

Eagles might have been able to cope with all that if Dryml, Pedersen and Kasprzak hadn't got in on the act. Even then, they led 42-41 going into the last heat after Kylmakorpi and Shields had beaten Pedersen.

Was there another twist in the tail? Not for Eastbourne with Adams and Rickardsson around to deliver the final blows.

Eastbourne: Adam Shields 8, Dean Barker 7, Joonas Kylmakorpi 7, Joe Screen 7, Gary Stead 6, Jason Lyons 4, David Norris 4. Bonus points: Shields 3, Stead 2, Lyons 2, Norris 2, Barker 1.

Poole: Leigh Adams 18, Tony Rickardsson 10, Bjarne Pedersen 7, Lukas Dryml 6, Krzysztof Kasprzak 4, Ricky Ashworth 1, David Ruud 0. Bonus points: Rickardsson 2, Kasprzak 2, Pedersen 1.