No Points at Plymouth

The Border Roofing Monarchs went down 52-41 at Plymouth in spite of outstanding performances from Kevin Wolbert and Sam Masters, the latter escaping fortunately from a lost chain which brought him off in the final race.

As at Ipswich, the absence of Erik Riss (who has done well at King’s Lynn tonight) cost us a league point at least.

John Campbell said “We probably should have got a point out of it. Unfortunately we replaced two missing riders who scored 15 between them last time there with two guests who got three.

“Palm Toft was upset with his performance, I’m not blaming him but we missed our own guys.

“Even on the night we had no luck. We have a 5-1 tied up in the last race till Sam’s chain came off, and back in heat 5 I felt the referee had got things wrong – Simota came off under a challenge from Mark Riss, but Sam had passed Todd Kurtz before it was stopped. We should have had a 4-2 but it became a 2-4.

“But we can’t do it with just two riders against a solid team. Ryan was using an engine just back from the tuners, and he didn’t even get off the start in his first race! He had to change engines and did OK after that.

“Kevin was determined to improve on his last meeting here and he was really outstanding, and Sam should really have had a maximum but for the heat 5 ref’s error and that lost chain.

“Mark Riss did well too, on the pace and I’m sure he will be scoring points soon.”

Southern Comfort

The Border Roofing Monarchs make the long trek south today to take on the Plymouth Devils in Premier League action.

Both teams are forced into changes due to the first round of the under 21 world championship at Kings Lynn. The Monarchs have chosen to draft in a pair of guests to make up for the absence of Erik Riss and Max Clegg with Scunthorpe’s Michael Palm Toft deputising for Erik and Cradley’s Luke Chessell comes in for Max. The Devils have opted to run with rider replacement in place of Jack Holder with all of the rest of their line-up able to take a ride due to Jack being second in the Plymouth averages.

This is of course our second visit to the St Boniface arena this season having been defeated 47-42 last month in the second leg of our KO cup victory over the Devils. Our star man that night was our Captain and number 1 Sam Masters who raced to an emphatic full maximum. We did not have the backup for Sam that night to pull off a win with our only other heat winner being Max who as mentioned we will not be able to rely on for a repeat tonight. We will look for more from the rest of our heat leaders tonight as Kevin and Ryan only combined for 11 that night and on a track where he rode for 2 seasons we would really expect more than the 4 that Ryan contributed to this.

Plymouth have made a change since that night as well and Brady Kurtz has been electric since joining the Devils and will look to lead from the front tonight. We will look to catch the Devils cold tonight though as in fact they have only had one home meeting since our last visit there this being a resounding 56-37 victory over the Workington Comets.

Both teams are in the lower reaches of the Premier League currently with the Border Roofing Monarchs sitting 9th and Plymouth 10th and with the season a third of the way through for both teams after tonight time is running out if either are to make a concerted push to be back in the playoffs again this year.

Plymouth Devils

1- Brady Kurtz

2- R/R

3- Sam Simota

4- Todd Kurtz

5- Kyle Newman (Capt)

6- Stefan Nielsen

7- Ellis Perks

Edinburgh Border Roofing Monarchs

1- Sam Masters (Capt)

2- Mark Riss

3- Michael Palm Toft (Guest)

4- Ryan Fisher

5- Kevin Wolbert

6- Luke Chessell (Guest)

7- Dan Bewley