Sussex speedway squad, the Eastbourne Eagles return to their more regular Saturday night action (7.30 p.m. start time) this weekend with a visit from the only team as yet to grace the Arlington raceway as yet in season 2008 and that can only mean that tomorrow (Saturday) night, the Eagles play host to the reigning Elite League Champions, the Coventry Bees.

The Brandon outfit completed a clean sweep of trophies in 2007, heading serial runners up, the Swindon Robins to the gold in all three of the major domestic competitions, Knockout Cup and Craven Shield successes being successfully wrested alongside the Elite League triumph in the closing weeks of last season.

Now they are back, clearly determined to hold onto what they have got and undoubtedly keen to exact some sort of revenge after the Eagles became the first team to stick the metaphorical spoke in their title retaining wheel, causing arguably the first shock of the 2008 campaign by winning at Brandon in front of the SKY Sports cameras on March 31st, and in the process becoming the first side to be the first beneficiaries of the new ruling that awards 3-points for an away victory.

Fate hasn’t been so kind to the Bees however as they strive to force their way back into the running for a play off berth and a chance to hold onto the title that they won in such glorious fashion last September.

As the week dawned, the Brandon outfit had contested only ten Elite League fixtures, in stark contrast to Eagles twenty one and with just ten-points to show from those ten outings they could be found residing alongside Midland rivals, the Wolverhampton Wolves at the tail end of the table, albeit with such a significant quantity of matches in hand.

Their match at the home of the Lakeside Hammers, once again as the SKY Sports cameras rolled, on Monday evening was reportedly their first league outing for some 47 days and unfortunately for them it wasn’t destined to prove the comeback that they had hoped for.

With Chris ‘Bomber’ Harris having suffered an alarming looking tumble in last Saturday’s Cardiff staged British Grand Prix, they already found themselves a man down as they headed to Purfleet, the Team G.B. international having been ruled out of the reckoning suffering leg and shoulder injuries in addition to a broken nose, the legacy of that frightening crash at the Millennium stadium.

They were to be dealt a further blow as their match against the Hammers got underway, American Billy Janniro, more regularly an Essex Arena track specialist was also sidelined with injury following a fall in the early heats and he along with Harris were effectively out of action for the remainder of the week at least which included a Wednesday night visit to Poole as well as tomorrow’s (Saturdays) head to head against the Eagles.

The fates conspiring against them, the Bees slumped to a mammoth 63-29 reverse, home skipper Adam Shields going through the card to claim a 15-point maximum at Lakeside, and then, though fortunes did favour them a little better, they suffered a further humbling defeat, going down by a 56-34 margin in Dorset in the middle of the week.

Absenteeism continues to plague them as they head to Sussex at the weekend. In addition to Harris and Janniro, the Bees will also be minus the talents of Australian Rory Schlein and English international Simon Stead, who will be elsewhere contesting the Semi-Finals of 2009 Grand Prix qualifiers, engagements that will also see both skipper Lee Richardson and Edward Kennett missing from the Eastbourne line up tomorrow.

With Richardson, Stead and Schlein all lining up at Terenzano in Italy, Kennett contests the SGP semi-final in Motala (Sweden) meaning that both teams will call on a little help from their friends as guest riders to cope with what could almost be considered a mini personnel crisis.

Poole’s Bjarne Pedersen and that man Shields each come into the Eagles fold as cover for Richardson and Kennett respectively while the Bees will bring in Wolves Fredrik Lindgren as a replacement for Stead while utilising the rider replacement option for Harris.

In the hours heading into the fixture, Coventry team bosses Peter Oakes and Colin Pratt, famed for often pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat in such situations, will be sure to leave no stone unturned in their bid to find replacements for Schlein and Janniro.

Despite the unorthodox appearance of both teams, such matches have often developed into absorbing encounters in the past and this should prove no exception as the Eagles bid to extend their unbeaten sequence to six matches around their home circuit and carve out a result that will further bolster their credentials as worthy play off contenders while trying to apply the brakes to Coventry’s own push for honours.  
 
Teams :
 
Eagles : 1. Scott Nicholls, 2. Lewis Bridger, 3. Bjarne Pedersen (Guest for Lee Richardson), 4. Cameron Woodward, 5. Adam Shields (Guest for Edward Kennett), 6. Simon Gustafsson, 7. James Brundle
 
Bees : 1. Rider Replacement for Chris Harris, 2. Oliver Allen, 3. Fredrik Lindgren (Guest for Simon Stead), 4. Guest for Billy Janniro, 5. Guest for Rory Schlein, 6. Stanislaw Burza, 7. Andreas Messing