Newcastle Diamonds v Edinburgh Monarchs

We knew from Newcastle?s recent form that we would need to ride well and concentrate hard to achieve a good result from the first leg of our Playoff semi.

We could be fairly satisfied with the job done, though it could have been better. We were missing Andrew Tully, and rider replacement was not a great success.

In spite of recent criticism of the Newcastle Stadium track it seemed to be quite rideable on this occasion, if a bit dry.

It turned out that gate 4 was by far the best place to start from, with the middle gates pretty useless, and this kind of thing always unbalances a match. It no doubt explained Ryan?s poor start off gate 3 in the opening race, won by Diamonds? guest William Lawson from gate 4. We shared it with Derek Sneddon at the back.

The next four heats all went to the gate 4 rider. This was Aaron Summers in heat 2, shared again, but the strong home pair of King and Bach comfortably took 5 from heat 3.

Wolbert was on the dreaded gate 3 in heat 4 and he struggled even to establish himself in second ahead of Leverington as Diamonds went 6 up.

Fisher beat King and Bach in heat 5 (from gate 4) and Derek Sneddon (from gate 4) went ahead in heat 6. This time though we saw Wolbert at his boldest with a superb outside pass in uncharted territory on the bottom bend.

Heat 7 was a bad one for us. Fisher off gate 2 made a start as did Wethers off the outside, but Ryan locked up on the first corner and Lemon ran into him. A possible 5-1 became a 2-4, and we feebly conceded a 5-1 in heat 8 as the Raj failed to make the most of gate 4. At 30-18 down it wasn?t looking great.

Wolbert was given a TR in the next heat even though it was against Newcastle?s best pair, and in fact it was Summers from gate 4 who won the heat with Kevin just failing in a massive effort to pull off an outside pass on the hard-riding Bach.

That was a 5-2 and we followed up with two 4-2s in heats won by Wolbert and Fisher. Matthew took an excellent third by passing Sneddon late in heat 10.

Now we were just 5 down. Wethers was pushed almost into the pits in heat 12 and though Summers led, he was overhauled by King. Wolbert superbly flew to a heat 13 win in the fastest time of the night so far but Ryan made a horrible gate and could not make up lost ground, trundling home.

We lost a heat 14 4-2 and finally we saw Wolbert lower the night?s fastest time once again in heat 15 with another astonishingly impressive ride. 50-41, game on.