Double Win Puts Us In Third Spot

REPORT Friday 2nd September 2016, 11:55pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Border Roofing Monarchs won both matches in tonight's double header at Armadale, beating Redcar 62-28 and Plymouth 39-30 in a match abandoned at heat 11, and that was enough to move us into third place in the table.

Unfortunately after a brilliant display against Redcar Max Clegg was unluckily injured at the end of the first match, so we had to use a makeshift reserve pair against the Devils, who also had problems at 6 and 7. Early signs are that while he is sore, Max isn't too badly injured and we should see him soon – fingers crossed.

Our number 7 guest Rob Shuttleworth was also injured, after just one bend of heat 2. He has a shoulder injury, we wish him well. Of course his absence meant that Max had seven rides against Redcar.

We were racing from the start with a weakened side, so the match against Redcar was expected to be a tricky one. However in all honesty the Bears were incredibly poor and offered almost no challenge. They had two race winners – Hugh Skidmore in heat 3, and Jye Etheridge in heat 14, an awarded race after Max Clegg had accidentally been brought down heavily by his partner Mark Riss.

It was pretty obvious that Max should have been awarded second but it was given as a 5-1 to the Bears. It didn't make much difference.

Our best performers were Kevin Wolbert with a full 15 point maximum, and Ludvig Lindgren who proved to be a superb guest with a 5-ride paid maximum. Max Clegg was also brilliant, and it was so unfortunate that his highest ever score of 14+3 had to end with an injury.

Ryan Fisher and the Riss brothers also picked up substantial points as we recorded by far our best score of the season.

Ryan Fisher had stopped in heat 1 after a good start, and Rob Shuttleworth's fall followed by the win for Skidmore had the scores level at 9-9. The next 5 heats would all have been home 5-1s but for an engine problem for Max Clegg in heat 7 which might have been caused by a collision with Andersen.

We took another 5 5-1s in the remainder of the match, with Lasse Bjerre, David Bellego and Tobias Busch all completely at sea. Believe it or not the score actually flatters Redcar, they were even worse than it suggests.

Clearly we were going to have to work harder in the second fixture, in which we had Kev Whelan replacing Max Clegg and Lee Payne guesting at no. 7.

We got off to a good start with a 5-1 from Lindgren and Fisher after Jack Holder had fallen. Amazingly we also took a 4-2 in the reserves heat!

Shelby Rutherford looped at the start and Lee Payne rode a great race to win from Etheridge with Kev Whelan riding steadily for the point. Todd Kurtz then narrowly beat Mark Riss who rode very well in heat 3, and Kevin Wolbert took his sixth win of the night in heat 4.

Mark Riss won heat 5 with Erik at the back, then we saw a truly hair-raising heat 6! Ryan Fisher was on a new unfamiliar engine and he rode very wide while Kyle Newman was trying to slip round the line. Lindgren came into the picture as well and somehow squeezed between Ryan and the fence to win which Fisher dropped back to third. It was quite something!

We then had a bit of a delay while the starting gate needed attention. Wouldn't you know it – this has almost never happened at Armadale, but it went bad on us in a double header.

We got it sorted and took another 4-2 to go 12 ahead, but Ryan Fisher was then excluded for clipping Stefan Nielsen and bringing him down in heat 8.

Heat 9 was a good team ride by the Riss brothers, even though second place was given on the line two Newman (wrongly).

Lindgren and Fisher took 5 from heat 10 so at least we had reached the point at which the result could stand. There was just enough time for heat 11 in which Holder won his TR ride, taking the first point of the night off Kevin Wolbert. It was now after 10pm, so the match was abandoned.

Full Result Details