Petering out at Peterborough

REPORT Friday 13th October 2017, 9:39pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Parsons Peebles Monarchs wrapped up their Championship programme for the year with a 54-38 loss at Peterborough in the restaging of the match postponed from 1st October.

It was not a great match and the Monarchs didn’t do enough to deserve anything from it. John Campbell said “Peterborough had prepared the track with plenty of dirt which normally means exciting racing with riders using the outside line. But the only heat in which any of our riders did that was a fine ride by Erik Riss in heat 13.

“Other than that, nothing happened – it was all from the gate. Sam Masters did OK but wasn’t at his best, and Mark Riss started well but after he crashed in heat 7 he wasn’t the same rider. We just were not good enough.”

It was not as good a performance as on their last visit when even without the Riss brothers, Monarchs picked up a match point. Failure to achieve that this time means that they are likely to finish fourth in the final table, though of course what really matters nowadays is the Playoffs which have already been won by Champions Sheffield.

We made a terrible start at the Showground and trailed 2-10 after two heats, with the Panthers’ influential reserve Simon Lambert involved in both these opening 5-1s.

However we hit back through Sam Masters and Mark Riss with a 5-1 over Ostergaard and Starke.

For the rest of the evening most of our scoring was dependant on our heat leaders with very little backup. Sam Masters won heats 3 and 12, Erik Riss won heat 13 while Ricky Wells took the flag in heat 5. We were outscored 14-4 at reserve, and rider replacement for Josh Pickering scored nothing at all.

All that remains now is the Riders’ Championship in which Sam and Ricky compete tomorrow at Glasgow, and of course our own annual dance arranged for the same night before the restaging date was fixed.

Full Result Details