STOKE face two matches within the space of 24-hours when they firstly face the Eastbourne Eagles in the Travel Plus National League at Loomer Road (7pm) and then onto face Coventry Bees’ at the Paul Chapman and Sons Arena on Sunday afternoon (3pm) in a double-header with Birmingham (1pm).

The Potters will again use Belle Vue’s Tom Perry as a guest for Tony Atkin and use rider replacement for Rob Shuttleworth, while David Wallinger returns to the side from injury.

Eastbourne are currently third in the league table and are looking to cement their play-off position and they have a number of rising stars in their line-up starting with Georgie Wood and Tom Brennan who form a powerful spearhead for the Eagles. The Sussex based club use rider replacement for Mark Baseby and with any rider within the Eagles line-up able to take one of his rides it does not weaken them, Jason Edwards has already visited the Loomer Road track this season with Cradley earlier in the season with Charley Powell completing the top five of the side. Ethan Spiller comes in at reserve and he is partnered by Charlie Brooks.
The Eagles went unbeaten throughout August winning all four of their matches with two impressive away wins at Plymouth and the Isle of Wight and they started September well with a comfortable home win over Kent before they were halted at table topping Mildenhall on Sunday.

Potters skipper Max Clegg commented “We showed last week what we are able to do around our home track and surprised a lot of people when we beat Birmingham here last weekend and we are quite capable of doing the same again. It will be a very tough meeting since Eastbourne are in an excellent run of form having only lost out to Mildenhall last Sunday, but if we can show the commitment and fight we showed last Saturday then who knows what can happen. We have riders within the team that can win races and they need to believe that, and my form has started to come back with double figures in last weekends matches which resulted in the Premiership outing with Wolverhampton, so let’s hope we can pull off another win against another top team and I’m sure the supporters will get behind the lads on the track.”

STOKE: Tom Perry, Adam Extance, Rob Shuttleworth R/R, David Wallinger, Max Clegg (Captain), Aran Butcher, Paul Burnett
EASTBOURNE: Georgie Wood (Captain), Jason Edwards, Mark Baseby R/R, Charley Powell, Tom Brennan, Ethan Spiller, Charlie Brooks