DANNY Ford believes Edinburgh Monarchs come to Wimborne Road in “seriously good form”, which belies their “misleading” league position.

Monarchs currently sit bottom of the pile in the SGB Championship, with five points from seven meetings, ahead of tomorrow's fixture with Poole.

They impressed twice against Pirates earlier in the season in the Knockout Cup, winning 47-43 at Armadale having been edged out 49-40 at Poole.

“They are bottom of the table, but I actually think that’s kind of misleading,” Pirates promoter Ford told the Daily Echo.

“I think they had a difficult period with form and an injury to their number one, Josh Pickering, who for them is impossible to cover, the same as Richard Lawson would be for us.

“They had a tough run of fixtures during that time and got some heavy defeats. But I actually think now they’ve come into some seriously good form.

“They’re going to be very tough to beat.

“They’re a team that ride our track particularly well, as we saw last time here, they ran us very close.

“So we’re really going to need to press on now.

“We really need to start seeing that kind of Championship contending form, starting from now, that’s going to see us through July, August and into the play-offs.

“It’s a tough meeting and the aggregate bonus point is what we’ll be targeting.

“We want to be going up to Armadale with as big a lead as possible, because that’s a tough place to go and they’re very good around there. It’s certainly going to be a very interesting one.

“While you can think it’s one of the top teams versus the bottom team, I think that’s a falsehood and I think Edinburgh will make life difficult for us.”

It is Poole’s first home meeting since victory over Redcar Bears on June 5.

“It’s been incredibly frustrating for us,” admitted Ford.

“I have tried to get other fixtures put in place.

“Obviously we’ve still got two pending semi-finals, which I’ve done my best to try and get those teams to come, with no success.

“The boys are frustrated. They’re keen to get back on track and I know our supporters are frustrated. I share that frustration.

“Everyone wants to be in the routine of coming to speedway every Wednesday night, particularly when the weather has been so nice.

“We just haven’t had that opportunity. It will be good to get back into the swing of things.”