PREVIEW: POOLE PIRATES v EDINBURGH MONARCHS - PIRATES ONE WIN AWAY FROM PLAY-OFF FINAL

The Poole 'Wessex Marine' Pirates will book their place in the SGB Cab Direct Championship Play-off final on Wednesday night with a victory over the Edinburgh 'Stellar' Monarchs.

The third member of their play-off group, Scunthorpe, have fulfilled their play-off matches with a total of six points, currently one more than Poole who besides entertaining Edinburgh at Wimborne Road also have an away encounter in Scotland on Friday.

Poole promoter Dan Ford, who took charge of the Pirates at Scunthorpe last Friday when they bolstered their chances of qualification with a fine win admits "we came through a very tough situation on Friday which was a must-win meeting to put ourselves in a strong position and we now face the task of needing a win on Wednesday to get to the final, which has been our aim all season. I think it is fair to claim that Edinburgh will be massive underdogs but with that label means they have nothing to prove and no pressure on themselves. They will, I'm sure, be looking to go out there and claim an upset and earn some money. So we have got to be on our guard. We can't fall into complacency like I think we did here a fortnight ago against Scunthorpe. Wimborne Road has been a real fortress for us and we want to keep it that way. We go into Wednesday on the back of that fine away win at Scunthorpe and that provides us with additional momentum."

The Pirates will be without the services of Anders Rowe who is ruled out with a mandatory nine-day concussion down after his heat one track crash on Friday and their only option is to operate rider replacement. Zach Cook, being the rider immediately above Anders in the September averages will be entitled to take one of the programmed riders, with the other three shared between the reserves Kyle Newman and Joe Thompson, both of whom coped admirably in covering Anders' rides on Friday.

Edinburgh will have Kyle Howarth guesting for them in place of the suspended Craig Cook, other than that change they will be at full strength

Should Oxford avoid a defeat by less than ten points at Glasgow on Tuesday then they will be in the Play-off final otherwise the outcome of Group B will be dependent on how Glasgow fare at Redcar on Wednesday.

Teams
Poole - 1 Richard Lawson 2 Rider Replacement 3 Ben Cook 4 Zach Cook 5 Steve Worrall (Capt) 6 Kyle Newman 7 Joe Thompson - Team manager Neil Middleditch
Edinburgh - 1 Kyle Howarth (Guest) 2 Lasse Fredriksen 3 Kye Thomson 4 Michele 'Paco' Castagna 5 Josh Pickering (Capt) 6 Dayle Wood 7 Bastian Borke - Team manager John Campbell