STOKE travel to the Paul Chapman & Sons Arena looking add to their league tally when they face the Leicester Cubs on Sunday afternoon, 4pm.

The Potters will be without skipper Tom Perry who is riding in the European Grass-Track semi final in Bielefeld, Germany so the Potters management have drafted in Kent’s Anders Rowe as a guest with Luke Priest taking over as captain for the day.

Leicester have had a good start to the season at home defeating Mildenhall in the KO Cup 55-34 and made the semi-finals of the KO Cup against the Tigers as the slipped to a 53-38 defeat in Suffolk while they opened their league campaign up with victory over the Belle Vue Colts 51-38.
The Cubs are led by Ellis Perks and he is well supported by Danyon Hume. The Cubs have a couple of injury issues with Luke Ruddick being ruled out by concussion after falling at Edinburgh in their defeat to Glasgow while Jamie Halder has a shoulder injury which keeps him out of the meeting. The East Midlands outfit will use rider replacement for Ruddick while Halder will be replaced by Belle Vue Colts reserve Jordan Palin who has started his racing career well with former Stoke rider Ryan MacDonald completing the top five. At reserve the Cubs have the Thompson twins who have started their racing career with the Cubs having done exhibition races last season at Leicester and Birmingham and both Dan and Joe Thompson have taken to league racing well with some impressive scores.

Stoke team manager Adam Isherwood said “Leicester are going well at home and from what I have seen it is a track where you really need to be gating and getting out of the starts with very little racing in the past when I’ve been there with even good riders not able to pass and I don’t know why or what the problem is but at the end of the day it is a track to be raced. We have all looked through the Leicester team and they have some very good riders but they also have a few weak spots. They have the youngsters Dan and Joe Thompson at reserve and if Joe (Alcock) has his head on then he can do well especially as he’s been doing well on the big tracks and I feel that he can win rides on there. In all honesty if you have the right mentality and you go into matches wanting to win then any team can go anywhere on their day and win matches and this bunch of lads we have here believe in themselves and go into every meeting wanting to win matches for this club.”

LECIESTER: Ellis Perks, Ryan MacDonald, Luke Ruddick (Rider Replacement), Jordan Palin, Danyon Hume (Captain), Dan Thompson, Joe Thompson
STOKE: Anders Rowe, Shelby Rutherford, Joe Lawlor, Luke Priest (Captain), Connor Coles, Corban Pavitt, Joe Alcock