Glasgow Tigers v Edinburgh Monarchs

This was obviously going to be a very important match in the section, but we made a very poor start and we didn’t have enough riders going well to pull back the early deficit.

Craig nicked the tapes in heat 1 after he and Lawson had moved together, and although he was quickly past Justin Sedgmen off 15 metres and close to Smith by the end, it was a 1-5 start.

Heat 2 went west by the same score and it wasn’t till Kevin Wolbert’s second place in heat 3 that we stopped the rot – though by then it was 4-14 and a long way back.

Thankfully Sam was undaunted and he won heat 4 with Rob Branford taking a good point from Sarjeant. Cook lost a good heat 5 to Morris, then Sam took a 6-point TR victory from heat 6. Kozza Smith came down in this one and brought Max off too, but Max managed to ride in the rerun and take the point.

That made the score 17-22 but that was the best it got for us. With Sedgmen way off form we lost a 5-1 in heat 8, then over the next three heats we had three successive race winners – Sam Masters v Morris in heat 9, Kevin Wolbert taking advantage of a Lawson wobble in heat 10 and Craig Cook against Summers in heat 11. However we were still 9 points down.

Heat 12 was another 1-5 loss as Kevin could not split Sarjeant and Morris and the best we could think of now would be a match point.

Summers headed our top two in heat 13, then Rob Branford got a welcome in win heat 14 after Berge went into the fence and Riss seemed to fail to turn his taps on.

Finally Craig and Sam took a consolation 5-1 from heat 15 over Morris and summers, so we have left ourselves with plenty to do over the next two nights.