COOK BRILLIANT AS WE GRAB A POINT

NEWS Monday 6th May 2013, 5:34pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Scotwaste Monarchs came back from a 17-point deficit to grab an unlikely point at Scunthorpe. Craig Cook's glorious 18-point maximum led the way but Claus Vissing crashed twice and was ruled out of the meeting.

You could not exactly call it a good team performance, as we made an unholy mess of things over the first ten races, but with someone as brilliant as Cook you always have a chance. There was enough support from Jozsef Tabaka, Theo Pijper and Max Fricke to take us into the last race with a chance of a draw.

How might we have done if Claus had stayed on his bike? It's hard to say as we did benefit from 4 TR points. He fell on the third bend of heat 4 (when on a 5-1 with Tabaka) and two heats later he lifted coming off the fourth bend while in second behind Auty. He wiped out the unfortunate Josh though the home no. 1 was able to take his next three rides.

The favourable news is that Claus believes he should be fit for Friday after a couple of days rest.

After 10 heats with the score at 39-22 it certainly looked like damage limitation for us. However a brilliant third-to-first ride by Cook on his TR against Howe, with Tabaka third, started the fightback.

Jozsef was working hard and joined Theo for a 5-1 in heat 12, which brought us to 8 down. Cook steamed off with heat 13 from the gate, and then it was Tabaka and Fricke, really rising to the occasion, taking a maximum off Birks to leave us just 4 down going into the last heat.

Cook as ever showed nerves of steel to complete his maximum, but the home pair pushed Theo to the back to ensure a home win.

Unusually for Scunthorpe, there was no advantage to gate 4, they were all pretty even - apparently the home riders had asked for this, and good for them. A level playing field is always better.

And it was a warm sunny day, a first for Scunthorpe in our experience!