WEYMOUTH Wildcats co-promoter Martin Peters expects his team’s season-ending Southern Development League clash with Reading Racers at Eastbourne today will be a “difficult” meeting.

Wildcats are without a victory this season despite a number of encouraging displays and distinct improvement among their younger riders.

However, they face a Racers’ unit that has taken four wins from six meetings to occupy third place in the table, with Peters’ men destined to finish bottom of the league.

Speaking to Echosport before the clash, Peters said the painfully familiar spectre of selection issues had come to prominence once more, with the likes of James Laker and Andrew Palmer filling in.

“It’s going to be a little bit difficult. I imagine their team will be quite strong.

“They’re going to have Dan Gilkes and Nick Laurence. It’s going to be hard, especially with the team we’ve got.

“We’ve scrabbled for riders. The only rider of (our) team is Jacob Fellows. James Jessop is starting his first week at uni.

“Bailey’s dad’s going out on the Saturday, so he can’t make it. The others have said they are unavailable or have ignored me,” he said.

But Peters was confident the replacements could make an impact, saying: “Andrew won the individual we ran down at Eastbourne earlier in the season.

“He’s had a few falls but he can be handy when he wants to. Jacob has massively improved from when he first started the season.

“They just keep getting quicker. If they are up against Dan, that’s their aim – to try and get as close to him as they can.”

Reflecting on the season, Peters had more mixed feelings. He said: “There’s been some bright sparks there, Bailey and Jacob have been fantastic. To see them improve has been great.

“There’s been some bad luck with Jordan (Bull, captain) getting injured in his first meeting and Luke Barnes having trouble with his van breaking down.

“Team-wise, it’s a little bit disappointing that we haven’t fielded our own team as much as we wanted to. It’s only happened once, which is a sad state of affairs.”