PETERBOROUGH have mixed injury news ahead of their Premiership trip to local rivals Ipswich on Thursday (7.30pm).
The Crendon Panthers will be without in-form No.1 Hans Andersen for the meeting at Foxhall, although fellow heat-leader Rohan Tungate returns, whilst Josh Bates again misses out.
Andersen, one of the heroes of the stunning win at Poole last week, suffered a small fracture to his right shoulder blade in a crash in Denmark 24 hours later.
The Panthers skipper is targeting a quick comeback for the Grand Prix Qualifier at Glasgow on Saturday, and the club will then assess the position ahead of their trip to Wolverhampton next Monday.
Bates, meanwhile, is still ruled out after a heavy start-line crash at Leicester nearly a fortnight ago, but new averages for June move him into the top five of the line-up.
Panthers must therefore use one guest and one rider-replacement facility, with Kyle Newman lined up to stand in for Bates whilst r/r operates for Andersen.
With only three Premiership clubs not racing, guest options at No.1 are limited, and Belle Vue’s Kenneth Bjerre was unavailable for a booking this week.
Ipswich, meanwhile, have been impressive at home this season but are without Jake Allen who has been struggling after a heavy recent crash at Foxhall, and they bring in Berwick’s Coty Garcia to guest at reserve.
Manager Carl Johnson said: “It’s hard to get a guest for Hans with his average having dropped despite how well he’s riding, and of course Ipswich and Wolverhampton are tracks where we’d expect him to score well.
“Hans was told he’d be out for two weeks, but obviously he wants to cut that down and race at Glasgow on Saturday, so we’ll look at things after that.
“With Josh out I’d prefer to use r/r at No.1 anyway, so everyone can get a ride and also by putting Scott Nicholls at No.2 it means he goes out in at least three of Hans’s programmed rides, plus we would expect also Heat 13, so that does give us cover.
“It will be a tough meeting of course against a side who are going well at home, but we will always go with the attitude of getting something out of it.”
IPSWICH: Richard Lawson, Danny King, Chris Harris, David Bellego, Krystian Pieszczek, Cameron Heeps, Coty Garcia. PETERBOROUGH: Hans Andersen R/R, Scott Nicholls, Kyle Newman, Charles Wright, Rohan Tungate, Aaron Summers, Bradley Wilson-Dean.