PREVIEWING: POOLE LOOKING FOR A ROYAL PERFORMANCE AGAINST THE MONARCHS

Two sides set well positioned for play-off qualification meet at Wimborne Road on Wednesday night (5th August, 7.30pm) when Poole host the Edinburgh Monarchs.

The Scottish side currently occupy second place in the league table, missing out on pole position purely by race points difference, as their league tally of 17 matches that of leaders Scunthorpe. Hot on their heels though are the 'Wessex Marine' Pirates, just a point adrift, so victory for either side could send them top of the table, depending on how Scunthorpe fare at Oxford the same night.

In looking ahead to Wednesday's action, co-promoter Dan Ford said, 

"We have already ridden against Edinburgh this season as they were our BSN sem-finalists and we came through those ties  with success and it will be our intention to do the same over the next ten days on Wednesday and Friday week. I am convinced that they will try and make life as difficult as possible. They have picked up two away draws and a win in their last three away league matches since we eliminated them from the BSN Series and I am sure that they will want to score far better this time around. But with our own fans right behind us we can certainly keep our push for top spot going. We all know that our riders have the same winning mentality as the management team have and whilst we gave it our all at Plymouth on Saturday, to lose our unbeaten tag was a bit of a disappointment, so now is the time to start building again and a decent win for the Pirates on Wednesday will be the perfect antidote to Saturday's narrow defeat."

Poole have their current top five all back together again after Will Cairns missed the trip to Oxford last Friday and Zach Cook the Plymouth meeting the following night, but in addition to the long-term absence of Fraser Bowes, they will also have a change at manager with Neil Middleditch unavailable, promoter Matt Ford will oversee the activities in the pits. News of Poole's guest for Bowes is still to be confirmed, the August averages and the other meeting going ahead on Wednesday limit's the options.

Teams
Poole (TM Matt Ford) 1 Richard Lawson 2 William Cairns 3 Lewis Kerr 4 Cooper Rushen 5 Zach Cook (Capt) 6 Guest TBC 7 Kyle Newman
Edinburgh (TM John Campbell) 1 Dan Thompson 2 Jonathan Grahn 3 Justin Sedgmen 4 Michele 'Paco' Castagna (Capt) 5 Kye Thomsen 6 Mitchell Cluff 7 Jordy Loftus