Glasgow Tigers v Edinburgh Monarchs

Since our surprise win at Ashfield in the KO Cup, Tigers had strengthened with the inclusion of Bager for Mills, so perhaps another surprise wasn’t on the cards.

Nevertheless in hindsight, in spite of a very slow start, we weren’t that far away.

Unfortunately for once our opening pair of Craig Cook and Derek Sneddon never really got in to the match. Craig had one good chase on Grieves but we didn’t see the man who has been so brilliant everywhere this season.

Of course gating was all important on an over-watered track, and there was only one pass during the meeting – who would have put money on that being by Marcel Helfer?

It’s true, heat 8 with Monarchs trailing and everyone nodding off with boredom – suddenly Marcel climbs the banking, winds it on and races round Tigers guest Robert Ksiezak!

Later on he did even more impressively to back Theo to a 5-1 ahead of Josh Grajczonek, making a total of paid 7 which is the first glimmer of potential we have seen from the young German. Now to get the hang of Armadale.

Elsewhere our riders gradually came on to their game. Theo won heats 10 (from Screen) and 12, and Andrew beat Grajczonek in heat 9.

He also led all the way in heat 13, only to be too conscious of the chasing Grieves in heat 13, and ride across the turn and down.

That dashed our hopes after we had got within four points in the previous race. Matthew won heat 14 and he was our most consistent rider on the day.

Micky also took a tumble and has obviously hard a very tough weekend with that foot injury. We thank him for the brave decision to ride.

In the final race, Theo got into trouble on the last bend after clipping Screen’s dirt deflector and only just hung on, injuring his wrist in the process.