PREVIEW: KING’S LYNN v SHEFFIELD (ROWE MOTOR OIL PREM)

KING’S Lynn and Sheffield open their ROWE Motor Oil Premiership campaigns at the Adrian Flux Arena tonight (Monday) with the meeting also pitching two Grand Prix stars head-to-head.

New Stars No.1 Max Fricke will go up against his Tigers counterpart Jack Holder just five days before the opening round of the World Championship in Germany this weekend.

Both sides have been eliminated from the KO Cup although Lynn collected a home win over Northampton last Monday, whilst the Tigers missed out in a thriller at Leicester last Thursday.

Paco Castagna misses out for the Stars after his crash at Edinburgh on Friday, with the home side set to operate rider replacement.

Fricke said: “They are a strong team and they’ve got riders who ride really well here, and who will want to come here and have a good one as well.

“It’s the start of the league, so it’s going to be very important. With the Holder boys and Josh Pickering in there as well, they have a strong side and I’m sure they’re going to push us all the way.

“Hopefully we can ride a bit like we did last Monday, make a few changes and see if we can improve from there.”

Sheffield manager Simon Stead said: “Looking down the scorechart (after Thursday), we need to get our reserves firing pretty quick. It’s still very early days though, and there’s plenty we can build on.

“King’s Lynn is another tough place to go and they’ve got a really nice line-up this year.

“But it’s somewhere we’ve proven to go very well at in the past and I want us to go there all guns blazing and give ourselves a very good chance.”

KING’S LYNN: Max Fricke, Paco Castagna R/R, Chris Harris, Ben Cook, Jan Kvech, Cooper Rushen, Jody Scott.

SHEFFIELD: Jack Holder, Anders Rowe, Chris Holder, Leon Flint, Josh Pickering, Jye Etheridge, Luke Killeen.

SCB Referee: Simon Humphrey-Kennett