Rye House Rockets v Edinburgh Monarchs

Our riders deserve the utmost praise for coming through the intense four-day spell of matches with everything achieved, finishing by making it comfortably through to the KO Cup Final.

Certainly Rye House enjoyed little luck in the tie, but the job was still there to be done at Hoddesdon and we had mainly to thank Matthew Wethers and Andrew Tully for steering us through.

When we knew that Rockets had a guest and a junior at reserve, we probably entertained thoughts of victory.

However Kyle Hughes proved to be an excellent choice and will surely now be a target for the Rockets next season.

The main requirement for us was to make a strong start and not give Rye House any sniff of a chance. That made Ryan?s hard fought opening win over Neath important.

Heat 2 was in the process of going wrong but fortunately for us, Hawkins fell off. Aaron Summers might have been expected to dominate the reserve situation, indeed he should have, but it was one of his off days and the best we could do was share the rerun behind the confident looking Hughes.

All was well, though, as Matthew and Andrew dominated heat 3 even though they were up against a strong Haines/ Bowen pair.

Leading 11-7 meant the tie was close to being killed off already. Michal led heat 4 but was caught by Sundstrom, then unfortunately we hit a bad patch.

In heat 5 Fisher attempted a big cutback after missing the start but he spun off, and Andrew could not recover from a poor start in the rerun.

Then against Neath and Haines, the Raj was fairly easily swept aside, and if we were ever going to feel any nerves this might have been the point.

Cue Wethers and Tully again. Good boys, they headed Sundstrom and at that point, we needed only finishers to qualify.

We had Matthew in heat 8, but with another quality ride Hughes held him off to give Rockets a 4-2.

Any thoughts of a win on the night were pretty well dismissed as we lost 5-1s in the next two heats. Rajkowski was swept aside in heat 9, and even our best pairing could not stop Neath and that man Hughes again in heat 10.

We were 36-24 down now, and there was a controversial exclusion for Fisher in heat 11. Duelling with Sundstrom, it appeared he was through when the Swede tried to lean on him, bringing both down. Ryan got the blame from Barbara Horley.

However we saw the other side of the Raj in the rerun as he stormed to victory.

A lovely cutback from Andrew won him heat 12 over Haines, and we shared heat 13 behind the in-form Neath, who is under criticism from the home fans for ?not being a no. 1? but who has been impressive in both legs of this tie.

Matthew won again in heat 14 and Aaron at last pulled out a reasonable ride to give us an advantage.

It had to be Matthew and Andrew in heat 15, and they shared it behind Neath once again.