PREVIEW: PIRATES ON BACK FOOT WITH A MARGIN OF FOURTEEN TO MAKE UP

10/10/23

POOLE have faced mountains before and scaled them. Now they face, arguably, the sternest test, at least of Dan Ford's time as promoter, when they seek to defend the SGB Championship league title, by welcoming the Glasgow Tigers to Wimborne Road with the Scottish side holding a fourteen point advantage from the first leg.

Having seen his side suffer their biggest margin of defeat in a play-off fixture, since their eighteen point drubbing at Ipswich in the Elite League semi-final play-off in 2019, Ford admitted after Tuesday's 38-52 defeat that "we are obviously disappointed with the result, we had been hoping to keep the scores to within ten in all honesty but the way things were going early on, when we certainly had our fair share of bad luck, it could have been a lot worse.

"The fourteen point deficit is not impossible to pull back. It is right in that danger zone and the tie is certainly very much alive and we will be looking to return the complements on Wednesday at fortress Wimborne Road. It is certainly a mouth-watering tie, one that could go either way so there is still plenty to ride for and I would therefore urge the supporters to come along an cheer the Pirates because we are certainly going to need our fans to be our 'eighth man'.

Many eyes will be on the Tigers' close-to-deadline signing coup of Russian Vadim Tarasenko as he makes his first appearance at the Wimborne Road circuit. Vadim won his opening three rides on Monday before losing his unbeaten tag at the hands of Richard Lawson and sensationally Joe Thompson in heat eleven. But there are likely to be no surprises as far as the Tigers' number one Chris Harris is concerned, with his exploits over the years having brought tears of joy and sorrow to Poole fans especially at play-off time.

Teams
Poole (38) - 1 Richard Lawson 2 Anders Rowe or Rider Replacement 3 Ben Cook 4 Zach Cook 5 Steve Worrall (Capt) 6 Kyle Newman 7 Joe Thompson Team manager Neil Middleditch
Glasgow (52) - 1 Chris Harris (Capt) 2 Tom Brennan 3 Ben Basso 4 Rider Replacement for Claus Vissing 5 Vadim Tarasenko 6 Lee Complin 7 Ace Pijper Team manager Cameron Brown

Photo credt Anthony Burchall