BRILLIANT COOK LEADS US THROUGH

REPORT Saturday 26th May 2012, 10:53pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The whole team contributed to our comfortable passage to the next round of the KO Cup on a 100-80 aggregate over Rye House, but it doesn't half help when your no. 1 is in the kind of form which Craig Cook is at the moment.

He repeated his first leg score of 14, winning his first four races in style before dropping a heat 15 point to top Rocket Jordn Frampton. It didn't much matter whether Craig made the gate or not, he was unstoppable.

He even seemed to make the start of gate one in the last heat, but he swung slightly too wide allowing both Frampton and Bowen through. He re-passed Bowen but could not catch Frampton.

There were race wins also for Andrew Tully, Theo Pijper and Matthew Wethers as we made a strong start, never allowing the Rockets a glimmer of a chance. With the score at 22-20 after heat 7 the job was virtually done.

Had this been a league match we would have had cause to complain about the decisions of referee Phil Griffin. He seemed to allow far more than 2 minutes for Charlie Gjedde to reach the tapes in heat one, and Micky Dyer was on the wrong end of a dreadful decision in heat two.

Jason Garrity was struggling with his machinery as he had in the Armadale leg, and when he locked up on the fourth bend of lap one Micky had no chance of avoiding him. No-one could believe that Micky was excluded, and Garrity was honest enough to apologise later.

In the end though all was well and the job was completed in style.

Full Result Details