PETERBOROUGH make the trip to the South coast on Wednesday with a tough test of their recent improvement in store at Poole.

PETERBOROUGH make the trip to the South coast on Wednesday with a tough test of their recent improvement in store at Poole.

Like the Readypower Panthers, the Pirates are one of the in-form teams in the Elite League and have the incentive of going back into the play-off places if they can take maximum points from the meeting.

Panthers are currently 13-points adrift of their hosts with two matches in hand, so an away win is vital if they are to have realistic aspirations of catching the Wimborne Road side.

And they travel in a rich vein of form after their home and away wins over Swindon which have, coupled with their amended result of four points gained at King’s Lynn, seriously raised confidence levels within the team.

Poole, meanwhile, have mounted a strong revival of their own after a disastrous, injury-ravaged first half of the season, and recently completed the signing of former World Champion Greg Hancock to replace broken thigh victim Chris Holder.

Their recent home wins have been convincing, with Polish youngster Maciej Janowski in a rich vein of form to support newly-appointed captain Darcy Ward.

Both sides hope to be at full strength for the meeting – the Panthers do travel with their regular septet, including free-scoring Patrick Hougaard at reserve, but the Pirates are waiting for news on whether Josh Grajczonek will be required to ride for his Premier League club Somerset. They have club asset Kyle Howarth on stand-by should that be the case.

Panthers co-promoter Trevor Swales said: “We’re all up for the meeting and we’re definitely going down there with the intention of getting something out of it.

“It’s not going to be easy, Poole are now much stronger than they were earlier in the season and obviously I’d have much preferred to be racing them there when they were struggling!

“But we are at full strength and looking forward to it, and I think it will be a good meeting. You should always go everywhere looking to win, and we’ll be doing exactly that.”

POOLE: Darcy Ward, Tomas H Jonasson, Greg Hancock, Rohan Tungate, Maciej Janowski, TBC, Micky Dyer.

PETERBOROUGH: Kenneth Bjerre, Ryan Fisher, Norbert Kosciuch, Krzysztof Buczkowski, Joonas Kylmakorpi, Dakota North, Patrick Hougaard.