PREVIEW: PASSIONATE PIRATES PRESSING FOR POINTS

Poole Wessex Marine Pirates resume BSN action on Wednesday night when they make the relatively short trip to Oxford, for the first of their two away fixtures in the Southern Group.

Having been nudged off the top spot by Plymouth earning the bonus point against the Oxford Cheetahs last Saturday, the Pirates will have the absolute minimum goal of scoring thirty points to keep the pressure on in a tightly contested group.
Dan Ford, proud of his sides' achievements from the weekend Northern tour acknowledges "Oxford is a tough place to go and I feel certain that they will have some extra fight in them after the Good Friday trouncing we gave them at Wimborne Road. But there is a lot of heart and passion in our side this year and we proved in our last two meetings that we will never just roll over. Obviously, we want to win as many matches as we can but then again every team will have that desire, so the priority will be to make sure we first of all secure the bonus point and then push on to hopefully make the trip even more fruitful."
With Sam Masters and Scott Nicholls truly big hitters around the Cowley circuit, Poole are bound to have their work cut out, although the Cheetahs showed a little vulnerability when they hosted Plymouth, only running out winners in a last heat decider last month. More recently though they showed their real mettle by progressing to the KO Cup semi finals, just as Poole have done, by claiming an aggregate win over Glasgow by overturning a first leg defeat of 12 points.
Although Zach Cook had to sit out Birmingham' SGB Sports Insure Premiership fixture at Belle Vue on Monday, following his crash at Berwick, he has declared his intent to ride at Oxford which means that both teams will be at full strength.
Teams
Oxford (TM Peter Schroeck) 1 Sam Masters 2 Henry Atkins 3 Cameron Heeps 4 Jordan Jenkins 5 Scott Nicholls (Capt) 6 Ashton Boughen 7 Luke Killeen
Poole (TM Neil Middleditch) 1 Richard Lawson 2 Tobias Thomsen 3 Tom Brennan 4 Zach Cook 5 Ben Cook (Capt) 6 Sam Hagon 7 Max Perry

Photo credit Mark Lee-Sing