CONCERNED Matt Ford has warned Pirates' season is at breaking point and admits: "Rye House are in the driving seat."

Poole face strugglers King's Lynn in Dorset tonight (7.30pm) with the hosts desperate to keep alive their hopes of reaching the top-flight play-offs, a quest the club has failed in just three times in the past 16 seasons.

Embattled chief Ford fears Rye House – who had been due to entertain the Stars last night – will overtake his team for the fourth qualifying spot in the SGB Premiership.

And in that event, Pirates' home clash with Lynn would prove their last outing as a team on Wimborne Road shale this year.

Ford's troops are due to travel to Lynn tomorrow before rounding off their regular-season fixtures at Somerset on Friday. And the promoter wants to make the trip to the Oaktree Arena with a double victory in the can.

He told the Daily Echo: "To give ourselves any form of chance, we have to win on Wednesday and Thursday. As I feared, Rye House are in the driving seat.

"It's now down to fate. Fair play to the boys, since my scathing remarks a few weeks ago, they have definitely performed much better.

"I don't believe that to be anything to do with my words, I believe it to be their own self-respect. They have upped their game and been very competitive since that awful display at home to Rye House. They have at least given us a chance.

"It does seem very strange to think that Wednesday will probably be – in terms of percentages – our last home meeting of the season. I've never been talking about a season closing at the end of August before.

"Last season we did run one or two other events, things like the Blue Riband to prolong the season but they weren't supported that well.

"Once you are out of the play-offs, people's heads drop and their love for the sport tends to fade until we pick up the reins the following March.

"For me, it would be incredibly sad if Wednesday is the last home meeting of the season.

"We would only have ourselves to blame if it did. I can point at many things and probably do but we would have to take it on the chin and move forward."

While Ford admitted failure to reach the top four would be a shattering body blow, he insisted there remained hope for the future.

He said: "You can't look at any season as being any form of success unless you have made the top four.

"If we don't make it then things are not moving in the correct manner at the club and we have to put our hands up to that.

"It would be incredibly disappointing not to make it and the only heart I would take is that the last time we didn't make it was 2009 and the following six years we won it four times and were runners-up twice."