Redcar Bears v Edinburgh Monarchs

We lost by a point on our first visit to Redcar, and even without William Lawson our return for the league fixture was a match we were targeting for a win.

As it turned out, we got nowhere near it and the score probably flattered us a bit in the end. We trailed 5-19 after four heats and our aim was reduced to damage limitation from then on.

Henrik took second place in the opening race with Theo tamely surrendering third on the opening lap. Worse still, Derek crashed on the first lap of heat 2 and needed an ambulance ride with a painful leg knock.

The rerun was a 1-5, and so were heats 3 and 4, even though we had used our strongest rider replacement (Theo) in heat 3. A truly dismal start.

Even though Suchanek and Little had looked formidable in heat 3, we chanced a TR for Henrik off gate 4 in heat 5, and it worked fairly well as our opening pair kept Kevin at the rear to record a 5-3.

Back to the 1-5's in heat 6 though, Rusty again struggling after a bad start. Matt Tresarrieu was looking good in tandem with Havelock.

At last we got a race winner in heat 7, a good ride by Matthew to defeat Chris Kerr. No. 8 Adam Roynon took the rider replacement ride and recorded a good third ahead of Hargreaves.

Amazingly after scoring paid 6 from 2, Dan Giffard had been taken ill and pulled out of the meeting.

Theo in heat 8 took the second TR, but in spite of a lack of success thus far by riders coming off gate 3, Tresarrieu won easily off that gate. Derek struggled at the back so all we got was a 4-4.

Rusty at last got into contention, chasing Kevin Little in heat 9 and passing him round the outside on the pits turn for a fine win. Heat 10 was a maximum loss, then Theo made his first start and won heat 11 easily. Henrik got the better of an exciting battle with Kerr to secure a maximum advantage.

The interval followed, before Suchanek won heat 12. Bears had to go with one rider here to complete Giffard's minimum allocation. Havvy raced away with heat 13 but Henrik did well to pass Kerr for second.

Heat 14 was an odd race, Hargreaves leading all the way while both Matthew and Sean Stoddart passed the floundering Kevin Little.

Finally, we had an excellent finish with Henrik leading the last one but unable to withstand a big outside run by Havelock who completed his paid maximum.

The big difference from the Premier Trophy was that Derek scored 13 on the occasion. However it would be completely unreasonable to expect that all the time, and we have to look for stronger away performances from the heat leaders.

Discounting tactical ride additions, Theo and Rusty could only manage 11 points from 10 rides. Obviously, not enough.