BRILLIANT RYAN CAN'T SAVE US

NEWS Saturday 8th August 2009, 0:08am

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Ryan Fisher scored 15 points and won 4 races for the Scotwaste Monarchs at Berwick, but we slipped to a ten-point loss, the first time Berwick have beaten Monarchs since 31st March 2007.

Support from Ryan came from Matthew Wethers, trying so hard, and more fitfully from Michal Rajkowski and Aaron Summers, though Aaron finished very poorly.

The racing was mainly processional, and the outside gates tended to be a big advantage. Wilkinson (heat 6), Fisher (heat 9), Wethers (heat 10) and Makovsky (heat 11) all conceded 5-1s when coming off gate 1, so it made it all the more curious that Monarchs chose gates 1 and 3 after winning the toss in the final heat. Sure enough Wethers off gate 1 came fourth.

Had we recorded an unlikely 5-1 in that race we would have grabbed a match point. Fisher did head home Burza and Makovsky to complete another fine personal performance but the team has too many weaknesses at the moment.

After quite an encouraging performance from Max Dilger at Armadale on Friday, our new German had a less good night at Berwick on a track which would have been expected to suit him better.

Byron Bekker struggled too and rider replacement didn't achieve much for us.

There are only three riders left from last year's league winning team for reasons we know only too well, and it is showing.

Full Result Details