Eastbourne Eagles aim to celebrate winning the Elite League in style at Arlington Stadium tomorrow night.

A point from their last match of the regulation season against Coventry will guarantee Eagles the No.1 spot.

If Wolverhampton fail to win at Peterborough tonight, it will already be all over bar the shouting before the tapes go up at the Sussex track.

But Eagles must beware a scenario which could still see them plunged into potential play-off disaster.

Oxford did Eastbourne a massive favour on Wednesday night when they beat Wolverhampton 50-40, but if Wolves pick up three points from their final match tonight then it's game on again.

That would put them level at the top with a superior race points record, so defeat for Eagles against Coventry would hand pole position to Wolves.

That, says Eastbourne boss Jon Cook, is "unthinkable".

After being pace-setters for most of the gruelling 32-match league schedule over the last seven months, Eagles are already facing the lottery of a newly-devised play-off system.

Finishing top will project Eastbourne into the play-off final in October. Anything less, and they will have to try to reach the championship decider via a qualification system involving the teams who finish second, third, fourth and fifth.

Cook said: "We don't even want to think about going down that road."

All the play-off matches are scheduled to be staged on Wednesday nights to meet the demands of television and that in itself will present problems for Eagles with the stadium taken over until the end of September by stock car racing.

Cook said: "There is enormous pressure on us to finish top. We cannot afford to blow it."

Publicly he is disappointed the battle for top spot could go right down to the wire. Privately, he is fuming.

Not so long ago, he was saying confidently his team could not be caught. Several blips later, and it is a different story.

A major setback was losing at home to struggling Ipswich. Another was only drawing at Coventry against a severely depleted Bees team when Eagles had the match in the bag.

That result, added to Coventry's victory at Eastbourne earlier in the season, plus two spectacular away wins this week, casts them in the role of potential Arlington party-wreckers.

The man Eagles have to fear is Lee Richardson, son of one-time Eastbourne favourite Colin Richardson who began his own career as a junior at Arlington.

Richardson scorched to victory in last Sunday's David Norris testimonial meeting, a week after gaining a place in next year's Grand Prix line-up by winning the world championship meeting at Pila in Poland.

In between, he ran up 19 points for Coventry at Oxford and hit 16 points in the 45-45 draw with Eastbourne.

This week his tally is 28 points in the wins over Belle Vue and Poole.

It was Richardson who destroyed Eagles at Arlington earlier in the season when he won six races on the trot.

Skipper Billy Hamill, Andreas Jonsson and Stuart Robson are all missing, Hamill and Jonsson having both attempted unsuccessful comebacks last weekend, but nothing has taken the sting out of the Bees.

They clinched third place with Wednesday's remarkable 47-43 victory at Poole, where only one other team had won this year. Two days earlier, they won 51-38 at Belle Vue.

Hamill's replacement will be Nikki Pedersen, who scored double figures at Poole, while Eagles welcome back Dean Barker from injury and track Joonas Kylmakorpi in place of Toni Svab.