Monarchs Downed At Sheffield

REPORT Sunday 20th August 2017, 5:25pm

by Graham Muncie

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Parsons Peebles Monarchs were the latest team to fall victim to the table topping Sheffield Tigers as they went down to a 55-35 defeat at Owlerton on Sunday afternoon.

This was a remarkable tenth win on the spin for the hosts and cemented their place at the summit of the table as the season ending play-offs approach.

The Tigers are in red hot form at the moment and took the lead as early as heat 1 as Josh Grajczonek headed home Mark Riss in his first race back after a 2 month absence through injury. With Todd Kurtz in third it was a 4-2 to Sheffield and they had a lead they would never relinquish.

The second race was a similar result with Josh Pickering unable to overhaul the fast starting Jan Graversen and the Monarchs were already 4 points down.

Pickering was in excellent form throughout though finishing with his 3rd double digit score in as many matches and commented after the match “I started off with a bit of a bike issue but we found it straight away and I was happy to get my heat win. It is a track specialist type of track and Sheffield riders ride it so well. Lasse (Bjerre), Kyle (Howarth), Josh Bates and Josh Grajczonek ride it so well it’s like riding against 4 number 1’s there. The track was a bit different to how it was last time we were here but tracks change as the season goes on there has been a lot of racing on it throughout the year and the tracks go hard and that’s just how it is. We are still without Sam and that made it harder but it is what it is and we will regroup.”

The Monarchs did at least manage to stop the rot over the next few heats with top scorer Ricky Wells taking the first of a brace of wins for him in heat 3 and with Mark Riss repeating this trick in heat 5 there was still only 4 in it.

Gating was at a paramount with all races decided by the 2nd bend up to this point and unfortunately over the next few heats with the Monarchs having a prevalence of outside gates from which to try and overcame the home men streaked away.

Heat advantages in heat 6 and 7 for the Tigers meant a ten point advantage and it was tactical ride time for the Monarchs. Mark Riss was charged with the task but ultimately he could make no impact from gate 4 in heat 8 and was left at the back. And it looked like the Monarchs hope of a point was gone.

This was indeed to be the case as the home men turned the screw further over the next few heats taking advantage of an ineffectual Max Clegg and more unusually Erik Riss who had a nightmare of a day mechanically and finished with 0 points.

With the home men winning the next 6 races in a row at this point and taking advantages in 4 of them the score was looking more and more comfortable for the hosts.

The fans were at least treated to a cracking race in heat 13 when Monarchs guest Ty Proctor headed the field coming out of the second bend, a blanket could have covered all 4 riders for most of the 1st lap before the race spread out.

Any hopes Proctor had of dashing home star Josh Grajczonek’s maximum were to be dashed though as the Tigers number 1 pulled off a beautiful inside swoop on bends 3 and 4 of the 3rd lap to take victory.

The visitors did leave on somewhat of a happier note though as the excellent Wells took heat 15 from tapes to flag but in all honesty it was a pretty easy day for the home men as they made it a maximum 34 points out of 34 in their last 10 matches.

Full Result Details