PREVIEW: OXFORD v POOLE (MAXICAB KO CUP Q/F)

OXFORD host MAXiCab KO Cup holders Poole in the first leg of the last quarter-final at Cowley tonight (Wednesday).

Berwick, Redcar and Plymouth have already booked their places in the semi-finals, with Poole having come through a first round tie against Scunthorpe to reach this stage.

They have already raced at Oxford once this season, where the Cheetahs were 51-39 winners in the BSN Series although it didn’t prevent the Pirates from winning the group.

The home side are still without Erik Riss due to illness, and Nick Morris steps in to guest at No.5.

Oxford boss Peter Schroeck said: “I’m not going to set a target. Sometimes you can only win your home leg by a couple of points and it can be enough. Other times, you can win by twenty and it’s not enough.

“It’s just about scoring as many points as we can as a team on Wednesday and then doing the same at Poole next week. At the end of those two meetings, if we’ve got 91 points, then we’ll be happy.”

Poole promoter Dan Ford said: “We never really got going as a side when we went there in April. I think conditions caught us out a bit especially early on. We outscored them over the course of the final five heats, I recall.

“It was the first five heats where we lost far too much ground and we can ill-afford that to happen again, especially of course as there are no opportunities for tactical substitute recovery in this competition.”

OXFORD: Sam Masters, Luke Killeen, Anders Rowe, Mitch McDiarmid, Nick Morris, Darryl Ritchings, Dayle Wood.

POOLE: Richard Lawson, Fraser Bowes, Lewis Kerr, Kyle Newman, Zach Cook, Will Cairns, Cooper Rushen.

SCB Referee: Simon Humphrey-Kennett

*LIVE STREAMING: https://livestream.oxfordspeedway.club/