PREVIEW: BERWICK v POOLE (CAB DIRECT CHAMP)

BERWICK have called upon the services of Josh Pickering as they kick off their Cab Direct Championship campaign at home to Poole tonight (Saturday).

Pickering, who stands in for the injured Lewis Kerr, recently piled up 16 points at Shielfield Park for Edinburgh with the Bandits forced to change their regular choice of guest – because Richard Lawson lines up at No.1 for the Pirates!

Elsewhere for the Bandits, Jye Etheridge is fit to return after missing their last meeting with back and neck injuries.

Berwick boss Stewart Dickson said: “As always Poole are many people’s pre-season favourites and they are a good side. But I also think there are areas where we can hurt them.

“We need the Drew (Kemp) who scored 12 points against Scunthorpe and we need Jye to rediscover his early season home form as well as everyone else doing their jobs.

“This is one of those meetings that you just want to win to set the tone for the season. It doesn’t matter whether it’s by two points or ten, just get the points on the board.”

Pirates promoter Dan Ford said: “We might have something of a ‘secret weapon’ in that Richard has always gone well there and only last week he scored an impressive maximum when he covered for the injured Lewi Kerr, but one man can’t win a meeting on their own.

“The lack of meetings as a unit has not helped us and we would have preferred to have gone into this schedule with more meetings behind us, but the weather has just been foul and we can now only hope that we are through the worst of conditions and look forward to a flurry of meetings.”

BERWICK: Josh Pickering, Danyon Hume, Jye Etheridge, Drew Kemp, Rory Schlein, Freddy Hodder, Bastian Borke.
POOLE: Richard Lawson, Tobias Thomsen, Tom Brennan, Zach Cook, Ben Cook, Sam Hagon, Max Perry.
SCB Referee: Graeme Hunter

*LIVE STREAMING: https://tv.berwickspeedway.com/