WELL BEATEN IN THE WEST

NEWS Sunday 9th August 2009, 10:13pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

We didn't go to Glasgow with high expectations, following our recent team problems, and sure enough we had one of our poorest days at Ashfield with Ryan Fisher crashing spectacularly as we lost 55-38.

Ryan's unfortunate accident came as he ride as a TR in heat 11, off the unproductive gate 1. He trailed Rajkowski and Grieves, and Grieves had already tried a couple of wide turns on the pits corner. Ryan went for that move too to improve his third position, and caught the fence.

He flew threw the air and landed on the track with his bike going over the fence.

It seems at the moment that there is nothing more serious than concussion. Shane Parker and his wife were both quickly on the scene to check on Ryan along with the medical staff, and Daelyn also speedily made it down from the terraces with the junior Fishers. That's how serious it looked but hopefully the outcome is not too bad.

We kept the score to a reasonable 27-21 at heat 8, but things went wrong in heat 9 when Fisher and Summers went for the same outside line after gating. Tangled up and gifted a 5-1 to Glasgow. That was embarrassing, and so was the post-race disagreement between our pair.

Two heats later came the much more serious incident, and from then on we just wanted the match over. We did have one joyful moment when Matthew Wethers took the second TR in heat 14, and came from last to first with an amazing ride. With Summers in third that was a 7-2.

Michal Rajkowski was our best man overall with two wins in his 10+2, and Max Dilger went much better than at Berwick scoring 4+2, including a good pass on Dicken and a third ahead of Grajczonek.

It was a tough weekend for Byron Bekker though, scoreless from three rides.

Full Result Details