Previewing: Poole v Plymouth - Cab Direct Championship - July 17th - updated

Victory in the South-West derby on Wednesday night (17th July, 19:30) would send the Poole 'Wessex Marine' Pirates back to co-leaders of the SGB Cab Direct Championship, but standing in their way will be a full-strength Plymouth Gladiator side.

Dan Ford, promoter of the Poole side that are currently two points shy of leaders Oxford and Scunthorpe's fourteen point haul, admitted, "as things currently stand we have ridden the fewest number of league matches in the Championship, but have quite a schedule ahead of us with four home league matches, starting on Wednesday, followed by three very tough away matches (Redcar, Glasgow and Workington) and it is crucial for us that we can be in a strong position heading into those. So a really positive result against Plymouth will be most welcomed, but we know that we are going to have to be on it from the very first green light and be a little more consistent throughout the team than we were against Edinburgh in our last match. Ideally I would like to see something similar to the score we achieved when Plymouth were last in town. On that occasion, in the BSN, we won by twenty six points, but of course they lost Nico (Covatti) after two rides on his injury comeback that night and he has had more time in the saddle since, whilst you also have to believe that Kyle (Newman) won't have such a tough night as he did in that meeting when he only scored one point. We simply cannot take anything for granted but we are absolutely determined to send the Gladiators back to Devon disappointed."

The Pirates welcome back Vinnie Foord to the reserve berth, after missing their last meeting through a wrist injury that he sustained in his crash in the recent Riders' Championship that Poole staged. The suspicions of a break became unfounded when the initial cast was removed and he appeared to have full movement in the wrist.

Plymouth will go into the meeting without the services of Dan Thompson who suffered a dislocated shoulder whilst competing for Team GB in SON2 on Friday night. A rider that has been pulling up trees wherever he has ridden this season, Dan has been undergoing treatment on the shoulder and is keen to be back in the saddle as soon as possible, but Wednesday.has come too soon. Drew Kemp will guest in place of him.

Action gets underway at 7.30pm on Wednesday night and Ford is hoping that the local derby fever, fuelled with the return of speedway after the break for the Speedway of Nations and the Euros, together with the Kids for Free admissions program will attract a good turn out to cheer the Pirates on to victory.

With the recent addition of their semi-final dates in the KO Cup and BSN Series, the Pirates now have a regular unbroken run of Wednesday nights through to the 21st August, and hopefully more dates to follow with continued progress in all three competitions.
Teams
Poole (Team manager Neil Middleditch) 1 Richard Lawson 2 Tobias Thomsen 3 Ben Cook (Capt) 4 Zach Cook 5 Tom Brennan 6 Sam Hagon 7 Vinnie Foord
Plymouth (Team manager Garry May) 1 Nico Covatti 2 Alfie Bowtell 3 Drew Kemp (Guest) 4 Kyle Newman 5 Ben Barker (Capt) 6 Joe Thompson 7 Jacob Hook

Article updated 16th July 2024 as per italicised text