Off to Plymouth we go

REPORT Saturday 14th May 2016, 1:21am

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Border Roofing Monarchs gave themselves a good chance of progressing in the KO Cup for this season by taking a 54-36 advantage from the first leg against Plymouth – after a pretty poor start!

Our top four dropped very few points, all of them to Plymouth’s guest Steve Worrall who beat Sam and Erik in heat 1, Ryan in heats 11 and 15 and Kevin also in the last heat. Other than that, the visitors could not really get to grips with the home stars and even Jack Holder did less well than last year.

We needed points from the lower end of the team and to some extent we got them. Not in heat 2 though! Having shared heat 1 behind the fast-gating Worrall, we watched one of our worst-ever heat two’s as first Dan Bewley toppled over after a slow start, then Max Clegg feebly trailed home behind the pairing of Stefan Nielsen and Ellis Perks.

As if annoyed with himself, Max then got truly stuck in in a way we haven’t seen for a few weeks, catching Jack Holder off the last corner in heat 7, taking a good point from Simota in heat 11 and romping away with heat 14. That should be the corner turned for Max.

Dan Bewley had an important paid win in heat 4 which got a great response from the fans. Our 16 year old will certainly get better and better.

For Jye Etheridge, it could have been a good night – last in heat 3, a good point in heat 5, he was on schedule for a paid win in heat 9 until he came off when well clear of the opposition. He could have done without that, and he did nothing in heat 14, so a single point was a disappointing outcome.

No great need to talk about the top four, they all did their job. Kevin Wolbert had probably the race of the night when he beat Holder on the final corner of heat 12, though the young Aussie also had an interesting tussle with Masters and Riss in heat 10 before coming off.

It was the riders who decided to put out the last heat pair without Sam, but there you go – sometimes management would do things differently!

We’ll see tomorrow if the last heat win by Steve Worrall was significant or not.

Full Result Details