West Cumbrian speedway star Craig Cook is looking forward to a return to the track he “loves” when he lines up against Workington Comets on Saturday (7pm start).

The ex-Comets rider is on the cusp of helping Edinburgh Monarchs to become the only Premier League side ever to retain the title after they topped the table to secure a play-offs place.

And the former Workington favourite said he was always happy to be back on the track where he passed his speedway education.

“It would be nice to go and win at Workington, it’s a track I love and the track I grew up on,” he said.

“I class it as my home track and it’s where I learned to ride a speedway bike.

“I’ve also got a lot of friends there and I regularly go to watch, I always like to see them do well.

“There’s no pressure on us so we’ll go out and enjoy the meeting.

“Workington are a solid side and have a few riders in form at the minute.

“I hope we can go all the way because we’ve proved we’re a good team, you don’t finish top of the league otherwise.”

Cook also said he wasn’t too disappointed to finish behind Peterborough’s Ulrich Ostergaard and Workington No1 Ricky Wells on Sunday’s Premier League Riders’ Championship podium, after revealing he had been ill during the build-up.

He said: “I wasn’t really up for the meeting at all, I’d had food poisoning through the week and I hadn’t been that well so I struggled on Friday at Edinburgh and was feeling really week.

“I just wasn’t myself at all so I couldn’t really complain with third place.”

The 28-year-old admitted the season has not been what he had hoped, despite a strong solo cameo in the British Grand Prix and consistently high scores in the league.

He said: “I made a lot of changes for the start of this season because I wanted to progress, so I invested a lot of money into my equipment.

“Since Cardiff I’ve been scoring double figures everywhere and I think I’ve broken five track records.

“It’s frustrating because I wasted three months of my season trying to get the equipment working that I’d already bought.

“I’ve learned a lot from it which I can now put into my preparation for next season.

“I look back at Cardiff now and I think I could have done a bit more. It would’ve been nice to make the semis but to go there and get seven points in a grand prix isn’t too shabby.”