Still room for improvement, says Monarchs hero Howarth

But the teenager today admitted he was far from happy at his overall performance and reckons he needs to improve over the final weeks of the season to end his first spell with Monarchs on a high.

Howarth, who has occupied the reserve berth with general distinction, revealed: “I was pretty disappointed with my display on the night, I didn’t gate and as a consequence made life very hard for myself.

“I’ve been struggling for form over the last few weeks and I don’t quite know why. Not so very long ago I was scoring eight, nine, or ten points, but lately I’ve come nowhere near that, and I need to get through this rough patch, not just for myself but for the team.”

Howarth added: “Everyone goes through a run of bad meetings and you just have to take it on the chin. I do learn from my bad meetings, but I need to raise my game and think I need to make a few more changes to my bike and take it from there, because I’m not sure why things have gone wrong.”

Howarth’s defeat of Somerset’s impressive guest Ashley Birks after Monarchs captain Matthew Wethers came down in heat fourteen paved the way for Kevin Wolbert and Craig Cook to snatch a dramatic 5-1 in the heat 15 finale to rescue a point for the home side.

And Howarth’s heroics rightly earned him the Monarch of the match award.

He said: “I knew what I had to do and also guessed that probably not too many people would have expected me to win the race because I had been pretty dire all evening, so the pressure was on.

“But I didn’t shut off and just closed my eyes when I hit the first corner and went for it. Luckily it paid off and it’s something I should have done in my earlier races.

“At least winning that race gave me a bit of a confidence boost because it was my only victory of the whole meeting.”

The 17-year-old ace is now looking forward to facing Leicester Lions at Armadale on Friday and said: “I want to score a few points for obvious reasons and it’s a match we need to win after the Lions defeated us by a point way back in April. That was a shock result we don’t want a repeat of.”