Three Points After A See-Saw Match

REPORT Saturday 17th September 2016, 1:16am

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Border Roofing Monarchs emerged as 50-43 winners against top PL team Somerset Rebels tonight, a good result but an odd evening on which fortunes ebbed and flowed. This ensures that we will finish fourth in the table at the cutoff unless Ipswich take four points at Newcastle on Sunday.

Of course we already know that Ipswich will be our first opponents in the Playoffs, and we visit Foxhall Heath on Thursday.

It was a strange match against the Rebels whose three main guests all performed well. On our side we were also grateful to Thomas Jorgensen and NL man Ben Hopwood for some important points. But after storming to a lead of 18-6 after four heats, we were pegged back, and even though we led by 11 with three heats remaining we were still taken to a last heat decider.

It was one of these matches we occasionally have in which the uneven starting gates played far too much part. There were ten heats which finished as either 5-1 or (in one case) 8-1, and of these seven of the maximum advantages were recorded by gates 2 and 4. Riders from gates 2 and 4 totalled 59 against 34 from gates 1 and 3 (if the gates were even, you would expect the scores to be roughly even as well). It’s something we need to sort out before it unbalances any more matches, and it is generally the home side which suffers as they lose much of the advantage they should have.

Individually Sam Masters and Ryan Fisher went very well (both dropped points in just one heat and they had four 5-1s together) but Kevin Wolbert’s scoring went with the gates (wins off 2 and 4, well beaten off the other gates). Max Clegg scored reasonably but had a very disappointing heat 14 in which both visitors passed him. It was another very poor night for Mark Riss who did quite a bit of practise after the meeting.

The Rebels were very unlucky to lose Jake Allen with a head injury and we wish him well. He struggled in his first ride but went much better in heat 7, in which Max Clegg led but locked up and brought Allen down. That unfortunately caused the Aussie to fall heavily and put him out of the meeting.

Paul Starke always goes pretty well and Bradley Wilson Dean caught the eye by improving in every race.

Overall it wasn’t a great display by the home side but we’ll have a better chance if we can even up these gates.

Full Result Details