Rye House Rockets v Edinburgh Monarchs

Rye House is one of the toughest places in Premier League speedway to go, and we crashed to out heaviest defeat of the season on Saturday.

It was also Rockets? biggest win of the season.

The track was certainly slick, having staged a Conference match the night before, but realistically that should not have harmed our chances of a reasonable score. After all, you simply need to make the gate!

That was something we managed rarely. Most of the heats featured the home pair jetting from the start and holding the lead, only being pressurised when Kaj Laukkanen was in the Monarchs? pair. Ten of the 15 heats finished in that kind of 5-1 uneventful outcome.

Our riders made the start precisely twice. And they recorded race wins ? twice. These were Matthew Wethers in heat 2, holding off the challenge of Roynon, and Kaj Laukkanen in heat 7, beating the formidable Steve Boxall.

Whether further gating successes would have led to wins, we never had the chance to find out.

We selected Matthew in heat 8 for the TR ride, which seemed a sensible move, but he was beaten out of turn two by Roynon and Kessler, and finally fell trying to get inside Kessler (who has a habit of slowing in mid-turn).

So we gained no additional TR points, and the Laukkanen win over Boxall proved to be the only point we took off Rockets? top five.

We?ll let Rye House team manager John Sampford have the final word. ?My riders hadn?t raced for two weeks,? he said, ?and they were very hungry!

?But you want to keep that young Finn. To ride like that after just nine 500cc meetings is impressive.?