Season Finale Ahead

PREVIEW Friday 13th October 2017, 11:00am

by Graham Muncie

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Parsons Peebles Monarchs will be hoping it is 3rd time lucky as we look to complete our SGB Championship campaign at the East of England Showground against the Peterborough Panthers on Friday evening.

While it could be argued that these fixtures are meaningless calendar fillers with the destination of the league title already decided last week when league toppers Sheffield defeated Ipswich Witches to clinch the title. However with 3rd place in the table still up for grabs between ourselves and Glasgow we do still have something to race for.

There is one change to the Monarchs line-up with Josh Pickering missing out; rider replacement operates for Josh with Mark, Max and Mitchell being able to take our young Aussies outings.

Beyond that we are as normal with the remaining riders looking to end their Monarchs season on a high. Outside of Max all of our guys have been in action since the Monarchs last meeting 3 weeks ago. Sam and Mark have continued on with Wolverhampton being agonisingly pipped to the Premiership title by a solitary point and they take a 10 point lead into the 2nd leg of the KO cup final away to Belle Vue next Monday also.

Ricky has kept himself ticking over with his appearance in the Championship pairs last Sunday and also a successful guest booking alongside Sam and Mark for Wolves in that KO cup first leg.

Erik was in action in front of the BT camera’s in the promotion/relegation playoff helping Leicester to a resounding victory at Sheffield.

Mitchell also made an appearance in the Tony Mole farewell meeting at Birmingham this week. Mitch recording a 5 point score for his Coventry Bees team as they went down by 2 points to the home men.

For the Panthers they also have one change with Tom Bacon forced to sit out with a shoulder knock former Sheffield youngster Jack Parkinson-Blackburn steps in. Beyond that the Panthers will be looking for a confidence building victory ahead of an upcoming KO Cup semi final clash against Glasgow and with a spearhead of Holder and Harris backed up by Bradley Wilson-Dean, Paul Starke and Ulrich Ostergaard not to mention home track expert Simon Lambert at reserve it is difficult to understand why the home promotion apparently gave up on their playoff hopes so early when allowing Jack Holder to miss several matches.

So this is it for the 2017 season as a team and hopefully the Parsons Peebles Monarchs can sign off with a strong result before our attention turns to Glasgow tomorrow to see how Sam and Ricky fare in the rebranded Championship Riders Individual and of course a night of fun for the attendees at our annual dinner dance.

Full Result Details