Berwick Bandits v Edinburgh Monarchs

REPORT Saturday 8th August 2009, 10:00pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

We took a big travelling support to Berwick even though most of us knew that the current team problems leave us much less competitive than we have enjoyed being over the last year and a half.

Bandits too had team problems, with Josef Franc away in the Czech Republic yet again (Wilkinson guesting) plus Luke Priest standing in for Gino Franchetti, who may or may not still be a Bandit.

We were off to a good start though, with Ryan taking heat 1 off gate 4 and Michal contributing the point. As it turned out, the gate positions were to prove very important all night.

Scores were levelled in heat 2 and clearly Aarnio was in for a good night. Byron Bekker got a terrible start and made up a lot of ground on Priest during the heat.

Stan Burza won heat 3 off gate 1, and that was to turn out to be an amazing feat ? no-one else did it all night. Generally the run round the outside was so strong that any decent rider on the wider gates used it to good advantage.

The Raj fell on the pits bend duelling with Aarnio in heat 4 which took the score to 15-9, but we fought back to level that over the next two heats.

Fisher brilliantly beat Burza in heat 5 with Rajkowski withstanding the efforts of Clews, and we took an excellent 5 through Aaron and Matthew in heat 6. They really powered off that second bend to go ahead of Wilkinson.

A couple of shared heats followed and at 24-24 we were doing better than expected.

The next two heats were an obvious danger though with the Bandits? pairs off the outside gates ? and we lost both 5-1. Fisher from gate 1 could not stop Burza and Clews speeding round him, and likewise Matthew Wethers in heat 10 against Wilkinson and Aarnio.

How important were the gate positions? Well in heat 11 it was Monarchs who had the wider gates and we took a 5-1 through Ryan and Michal over home star Makovsky. That?s how important.

We were not strongly represented in heat 12 and Clews/Aarnio were able to buck the trend of the gates and take 5. Max Dilger was not showing great aptitude for the bigger circuit, and Aaron did not have a good ride either.

Ryan did well to get a second from gate 1 in heat 13, and Matthew managed a 4-point TR in heat 14.

We won the toss for heat 15 but amazingly chose gates 1 and 3. Matthew was off the inside and came last as Ryan raced home to take his score to an excellent 15.

Full Result Details