OUR FIFTH LEAGUE TITLE

NEWS Saturday 17th October 2015, 11:58pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Border Roofing Monarchs won the Premier League title for the fifth time tonight as they swept Glasgow aside by 58-32, a score which believe it or not flatters Glasgow, resulting in a winning aggregate of 99-80.

After not performing particularly well on that now-forgotten dark and disappointing night at Glasgow, our legendary squad got stuck in, and despite a tendency to throw points away, we strolled across the finishing line at heat 13.

This triggered some incredible celebrations at the stadium. It maybe wasn’t as dramatic as last year but it was just as sweet. Glasgow were sporting in defeat (those that turned up), no complaints there, but they offered amazingly little threat to our triumph. What a night it was in the stadium bar with Cook, Masters, Sedgmen, Wolbert, Riss and Clegg marching up and down and beating the drum, enjoying the fruits of success.

We would have been more than happy to have Liam Carr there as well, because as usual the youngster did a job for us standing in for the injured Rob Branford.

So let’s go back to the match. Many people were nervous. Can we remember why? Perhaps it was because Sam Masters and Max Clegg didn’t have great meetings at Glasgow and we needed them to perform tonight. Did they ever!

Masters was astounding, man of the meeting. Using the engine he had earmarked for the Aussie GP (next Saturday) he shot from the start to win heat 4 against limited opposition, then in the key heat 7 with Tigers’ top two of Lawson and Morris, what a thrilling ride he pulled off. He first swept round Lawson, and with probably all Monarchs’ fans willing him to settle for second, he attacked and passed Nick Morris with a sensational outside move. While there was still work to be done, I think we knew at that point we could not lose.

There were some fears over the starts after the firm hand of Chris Gay in the first leg, and heat 1 seemed unfair with the Tigers’ pair shooting to the front. Craig Cook picked them both off and was just 0.2 outside the track record, but Sedgy was tailed off and stopped. Not a great start.

Max Clegg started a great personal night with a win in heat 2, a boost for everyone, and our Germans took 4 points from heat 3.

Heat 4 went well, a 5-1 over the weakish pair Tigers had fielded there, with Sarjeant so far not a threat.

Next came a Tigers’ heat win via Lawson over Wolbert, and there was nothing settled yet. We were six up on the night, one down on aggregate.

Any concerns about Sedgmen were despatched in heat 6, a 5-1 in a rerun after Palovaara had fallen. That was Monarchs in front, so we needed to maintain that over the next 9 races.

Stewart Dickson must have been aware of that because he put out Lawson as r/r with Morris in heat 7 against Masters. That’s when Sam pulled off the race of the night and if there was any doubt before, it clearly was going to be our night.

Sedgmen won again in heat 8, with Theo Pijper taking a tumble after what seemed to be a machine problem. Max Clegg had been excluded on two minutes and come out on a Masters’ bike, but got a gift point.

We should have clinched the title over the next two heats, but we didn’t!

In heat 9 Erik fell at the second corner after gating with Kevin, and failed to clear the track. Kevin won the rerun. In heat 11, Craig and Justin were soaring away for yet another 5-1, when amazingly Craig fell off riding out at the fence!

So instead of hitting 40 we led by only 36-24 which meant we were 5 ahead in aggregate. Could we stop giving points away?

Sam made it three wins out of three in heat 11, and that very reliable young fellow Liam Carr took the point from Theo Pijper even before Theo finally pulled out. Kevin then won heat 12 with Max Clegg in third, and we were getting close.

Who would you like to clinch the title? Surely no-one could be more appropriate than Cook and Masters and so it was, a 5-1 taking us to the magic total of 49. The celebrations had started!

We picked up another 9 over the last two heats with yet another heat 14 win from Erik, and 5 from Kevin and Craig in the last race. 58-32, 99-80 on aggregate and what had we ever been worried about?

Full Result Details