Peter Carr makes a quick return to Derwent Park after the Pairs on Saturday. He also faces a race to sort out his bike before this weekend's crunch encounter with Workington. The teams meet in the second round of the Cup on Friday at Armadale and on Saturday at Derwent Park. The winner goes into the semi-final draw to join Exeter plus the winners of the Hull/Stoke and the Berwick/Swindon ties. The elimination of the highly fancied Sheffield and Newcastle sides in the first round leaves the Cup wide open. That is wide open to any team who can go to the County Group and escape without a complete hammering! Glasgow suffered a 64-26 pasting in the second leg on Monday after building up a ten point lead in the home leg.

Both Carr and Eriksson appear to be operating with one bike each at the moment. Ross Brady offered the use of a bike for the Premier League Best Pairs at Workington last Saturday. This was just as well since Peter encountered problems with his bike. Peter added:

"My bike kept cutting out. We messed about with it, but we couldn't cure the problem. We didn't have much time to sort it out and we've still not got to the bottom of it. I'll be working frantically this week to try and work out what exactly is wrong."

Carr praised Ross and his dad for helping out with the loan of his bike:

"I had only one bike and Robert had only one bike. Ross offered us his machine on Friday. His dad got the bike prepared and it was ready to jump on."

The meeting last Saturday was ruined by heavy rain. Carr believes that it should never have gone ahead.

"Most of the riders, including myself, did not want to race, we wanted to pull out. However we did not get ourselves together as a group to put our point of view across."

"Basically, if you were behind you simply got filled in, you coudn't race. Even if you were out in front you couldn't see that well, the rain and the dirt got onto your goggles, it was a nightmare."

Even though Workington have gone of the boil somewhat since the injury to Barry Campbell, Monarchs will need to be sharp to go through. Workington managed to overcome the earlier injury to Darren Groves by drafting in Geoff Powell. The veteran teamed up with Lee Smethills to become one of the most powerful reserve pairings in the Premmier League. Smethills's elevation to number 2 and the injury to new reserve Barry Campbell meant that a Conference League rider had to be used to partner Geoff Powell. This seemed to put pressure on 'Big Leggy' and his scoring has deteriorated. The Comets now have Adrian Newman in the side and are hoping for improvement.

Carr is looking for a display like the one that brushed Sheffield aside last Friday.

"That was a good display, we all scored points. If we can do that against Workington I think we will win through over the two legs. Workington are a decent side, but we took the bonus point off them in the League fixtures."

"All our lads like Workington's track. The trouble is most of their riders like Armadale as well! Carl Stonehewer and Mick Powell are on fire right now. Despite the wet, Mick was flying on a Jawa borrowed from Stoney and I'm sure he'll keep it to use against us."

While Monarchs remain at the top of the Premier League, the Cup represents their best chance of silverware this year.