SATURDAY night is the night that no Stoke Potters speedway supporter ever wanted to happen when the Potters take to the Loomer Road track for the final ever time as they host the Leicester Lion Cubs in the National League, in the last speedway meeting at the Chesterton venue, 7pm.

In what will be a very emotional night for everyone at the track the Potters will be looking to send the home supporters home with a win.

The Potters have been hit by the loss of skipper Tom Perry who had a reoccurrence of his back injury in Birmingham’s meeting against Berwick on Wednesday night and Scholar Green based Jack Smith comes in to replace him in the number 1 race jacket meaning Luke Priest will take over the captaincy for the night. Stoke will also be without Joe Lawlor who is racing for the Leicester Lions in the Championship and the Potters will use rider replacement to cover for his absence meaning all the Potters riders can take a ride on the night.

Priest commented “It’s going to be a very emotional night for everyone including myself as I’ve spent a lot of my career at Stoke and have been there for some big events winning the fours back in 2006 and this season which was absolutely fantastic for everyone at the club and I was here for the 40th anniversary season. I’ve been through the ups and downs with the club and had some great times and some serious injuries but Stoke has always been my real home. I feel absolutely gutted for the supporters, officials and of course Dave Tattum who has put his heart and sole into Stoke Speedway over the years and I know it will be exceptionally hard for him.
As for the meeting it will be a very difficult match charged with emotion for everyone including the riders who were all hoping to return next season and we want to send everyone home with a victory. Leicester are a very good team and we saw what they did to us in the KO Cup meeting, but they were on fire at that time and I also have to say we were poor on the night and hurt ourselves with errors and we just were not at the races on the night and hopefully we can do ourselves justice and it would be absolutely magnificent if we could end the era of the Stoke Potters at Loomer Road with a victory on Saturday night.”

The Lion Cubs will be without Ellis Perks and have booked a very able guest around the Loomer Road track in Anders Rowe. The Lion Cubs also have two former Potters in their line-up with Ryan Terry-Daley who has had a couple of stints with the Potters and Josh Embleton who rode a couple of meetings for the club last season. The Lion Cubs also see the return to action of Luke Ruddick who has been out of action since he crashed while riding for Edinburgh at Birmingham’s Perry Barr circuit back in May.

STOKE: Jack Smith, Shelby Rutherford, Joe Lawlor R/R, Luke Priest (Captain), Connor Coles, Kieran Douglas, Joe Alcock
LECIESTER: Anders Rowe, Luke Ruddick, Joe Thompson, Dan Thompson, Danyon Hume (Captain), Josh Embleton, Ryan Terry-Daley