Pairs Tonight

NEWS Friday 8th July 2016, 9:55am

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Tonight at Somerset the first of the Premier League trophies will be won, with Sam Masters and Ryan Fisher representing the Border Roofing Monarchs.

Sam won the trophy in 2014 paired with Max Fricke, and it’s realistic to say that we are one of the favoured pairings this year.

Not all of the top Premier League riders are taking part. Robert Lambert and Steve Worrall would be a formidable pair for Newcastle but they aren’t racing due to being reserves at Cardiff the next day. British Champion Danny King (holder of the Pairs trophy with Tungate) is of course at Cardiff, and Craig Cook won’t be representing Peterborough as he hadn’t ridden enough matches. Brady Kurtz is another in that category. Rye House's Edward Kennett has now withdrawn through injury.

In our qualifying group we face Sheffield (Stead and Howarth), Ipswich (Covatti and Risager), Rye House (Heeps and Robson) and Plymouth (Holder and Todd Kurtz). Anything can happen in any race with the quality of riders on show, but it will be quite disappointing if we can’t make the top two in that company.

In the other group, the Pairs are Glasgow (Lawson and Summers), Somerset (Grajczonek and Tungate), Workington (Vissing and Wells), Newcastle (Lindgren and Kus) and Peterborough (Ostergaard and Jakobsen).

That’s the stronger group, favourites probably being Somerset followed by either Workington or Glasgow. Once we reach the semi-final stage, anything can happen.

Hopefully the weather will be favourable, no-one crashes and the big crowd will have an enjoyable night.