OUTSTANDING SHOW BY THE SCOTWASTE MONARCHS

NEWS Tuesday 10th September 2013, 11:39pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Scotwaste Monarchs emerged from a very rare home Tuesday match with a superb 59-36 victory over Ipswich Witches, the league leaders, in probably their best home performance of the season. It took them to second place in the league.

It wasn't that Ipswich were bad (though they did throw a few points away), but Monarchs showed great hunger and skill to dominate right from the start.

There wasn't a weak link in the home side, six different race winners with the seventh rider taking four paid wins! Ipswich had just three race winners, two of these to Ben Barker who made a more than satisfactory return to action after the medical about-turn which has restored his season.

In fact Barker led the opening heat (after a brilliant second turn) until a few yards from the line until he was pipped by the fast finishing Craig Cook.

Heat 2 was important in several respects; Max Fricke returned successfully, Liam Carr continued his fairly sensational level of performance for Monarchs, and Adam Ellis who has had two excellent meetings at Armadale, struggled in this one.

Race wins for Pijper and Vissing plus good backup meant we were 18-6 ahead after heat 4. A terrific tussle between Tabaka and Lanham for second in heat 3 behind Theo Pijper is certainly worthy of a mention – Lanham got the two points.

The Witches hit back though with a 7-2 in heat 5, Barker taking 6 while Tabaka got in a bit of trouble and dropped well back in the early stages.

Monarchs took a 4-2 in heat 6 but were looking like losing a 5-1 in heat 7 until Tungate got too close to Lanham's back wheel and spun off against the fence.

That regrettably ruled the Aussie out of the meeting though he didn't seem to be seriously hurt.

A heat 8 5-1 was followed by a second TR in which Risager took second spot behind the classy Pijper, and with the TRs out of the way Monarchs were able to kick on.

Once again Ipswich might have fought back when they were on a 5-1 in heat 11, but this time Heeps came down. The Witches will have been kicking themselves over these two blunders.

A 5-1 in heat 12 against the visiting reserves was not unexpected, but heat 13 was a bit more surprising. After picking up some gift points in his previous two heats Claus Vissing stormed from the gate and teamed up with Cook for an easy 5-1 over Risager and Barker.

It was rather surprising that Liam Carr was taken out of heat 14, with nothing at stake and a job well done by the Border lad, and the heat had to be rerun after Lanham and Fricke clashed on the first bend. In the rerun Jozsef at last got to the front with a fine burst on the outside of bend two, and won easily, but Max came down awkwardly chasing Lanham (no damage done).

Craig completed his 15 point maximum in heat 15 with Theo missing the gate, which meant that Monarchs just missed 60. In every other respect, this was a great show by the Armadale team.

Full Result Details