Preview: Poole v Plymouth (KOC 1st Leg)

Chapter two of the epic three-competition battle between the Pirates and the Gladiators opens on Wednesday (3rd May) night at Wimborne Road with the first leg of the Knockout Cup.

Holders Poole begin their defence arguably with the psychological advantage after their 103-76 aggregate win over Plymouth in the Southern Group of the BSN Series. Both sides won their respective home encounter in that discipline, Poole's victory masterminded after they blitzed the Gladiators in the first eight heats of their home leg.

Whether they can muster a similar performance on Wednesday will be a matter of conjecture especially after Plymouth hit back hard in the early stages of the corresponding Devon fixture before Poole produced a remarkable comeback in the final third of the meeting. 

Unbeaten in his final two rides at the Coliseum, Poole's reserve Kyle Newman is looking ahead to renewing rivalries so soon and acknowledges that things might be a bit different this time around from the 59-30 thumping they gave the Gladiators a fortnight ago. "It's another competition, on our way to battling for another trophy and we just love trophies here at Poole. It's the knockout cup and every race counts so we need to go out there and hit them hard from the start. We let them come back at us in the second half of the meeting, obviously I had the engine issues but hopefully we can do something like we did last time. We know they are going to be out to try and come back at us a little bit more, some of their riders didn’t come to the table so we just need to be our own confident selves , get out the traps and just do what we can do hopefully. You take [Kyle] Howarth. He didn't have a good one last time, but he's a good rider at the end of the day. He doesn't do that very often so you know that is going to improve but we have just got to focus on our game and I think once we do that we start to win more matches. We looked at our performance down at Plymouth the other night when we were sixteen points and we pulled it back, a couple of ropey decisions and we nearly won. When we focus more on ourselves there's not a lot stopping us."

The Wessex Marine Pirates have been boosted by the news that Anders Rowe has declared himself fit from the shoulder injury that forced him to miss last week's trip to Plymouth, so both sides will be fielding full sides. 
The second leg of the encounter will be staged at Plymouth on Tuesday 9th May.

Teams
Poole 1 Steve Worrall 2 Anders Rowe 3 Ben Cook 4 Zach Cook 5 Richard Lawson 6 Kyle Newman 7 Adam Roynon TM: Neil Middleditch
Plymouth 1 Kyle Howarth 2 Dan Gilkes 3 Paul Starke 4 Ben Barker 5 Richie Worrall 6 Jake Turner 7 Ben Trigger TM: Garry May