JAMES Shanes reckons the Pirates faithful can boost his bid to roar to British under-21 final glory tonight, insisting he will thrive off any vocal home support.

The Poole reserve is set to line up against the likes of defending champion Josh Bates, former Poole favourite Adam Ellis and Great Britain star Robert Lambert at Wimborne Road (7.30pm).

Although Shanes won his semi-final at Peterborough earlier this month, he faces a tough task to push the top chargers on Dorset shale and the 20-year-old says he wants all the backing he can get from trackside.

Shanes told the Daily Echo: "Having ridden in grass track events abroad, I'm used to big, party atmospheres. The bigger the atmosphere, the more geed up I get.

"When you are at the start, you get a sense of the atmosphere and if I can get the crowd geed up then that will be even better.

"Holding the final at Poole has its advantages because, hopefully, I will know the track quite well by then but at the same time, it's a track everyone has ridden.

"It's going to be difficult but my goal is to improve on last year when I ended up in the fence and didn't make a very good job of it.

"It would be brilliant to qualify to ride in world under-21 meetings but it is going to be hard with riders like Josh Bates and Robert Lambert in there.

"As long as I ride as well as I can, there is no reason why I can't be in the mix at the end. It would be nice to make the final.

"I have a reasonably good draw, being number three, so, hopefully, I can just keep scoring."

Shanes's semi-final victory was his second in as many years and the youngster admitted he had been unsure of the result until informed by organisers.

He added: "It was a bit of a surprise. I had never ridden competitively at Peterborough before, it was similar to when I practised there but a little bit different.

"Me and my dad went there and we said we just wanted to make the top 10 and go through, which we believed would be easy enough to do.

"After the first ride we knew it was all about not doing anything stupid and continuing to score points.

"It eventually came down to countback and who beat who. They told us who was first, second and third after the last heat and I had not realised the result until then."

Shanes rode in the Champion of Champions grass track event at Astra GC in Kent on Sunday, a meeting abandoned before the finals could take place.

British under-21 final field: Josh Bates, Adam Ellis, Robert Lambert, Liam Carr, Max Clegg, James Shanes, Connor Mountain, Zach Wajtknecht, Dan Bewley, Danny Phillips, Jack Smith, Ellis Perks, Nathan Greaves, Danyon Hume, Nathan Stoneman, Luke Harris.