PROMOTER Danny Ford revealed how Pirates were set to fine-tune their setups in a practice session tomorrow on the Wimborne Road track.

Poole lost their winning home run of 23 meetings when they were stunned by a defeat on their own shale against Leicester Lions last month. That ended a sequence of more than 1,000 days without defeat at home.

They then drew with Plymouth, before a lacklustre victory over bottom-side Berwick last time out at the Dorset venue.

The defending league champions have struggled in their past six meetings both home and away – only winning on one occasion.

With a crucial SGB Championship clash against Glasgow on Wednesday (7.30pm), Ford has called on his troops to get dialled in at home ahead of a repeat of last season’s SGB Championship play-off final.

He told the Daily Echo: “We are having another practice on Tuesday. All the boys are coming – apart from Zach (Cook) I think, because he is in Poland, just to nail down on it.

“We know Glasgow are going to be tough and they are going to want blood after beating them in the final last year.

“It’s a must-win for us and therefore we are looking at it as a must-win for them – not necessarily for their league position but just from a mentality point a view.

“We need to go into that meeting and send out a statement that we are here to defend our title and there is no better way than to do that than against Glasgow."

Pirates are currently four points behind the Tigers in the league table, having ridden a meeting more. The top two in the league go directly into the play-off semi-finals.

Asked whose idea it was to get the septet on track ahead of the crunch meeting, Ford replied: “I suggested it. We have had a couple of behind-closed-doors practices this year.

“We have been struggling with the track at home – the starts more than anything.

“One week, half the riders will make starts and the next week they won’t, we just can’t put our finger on it.

“We want to go in on Tuesday and just knuckle down a start. That was our advantage last year – we were so quick out of the starts it was like we were getting a head start every race. We need that back.

“It’s very important now to get that sorted and gain that home advantage back.”