Berwick Bandits v Edinburgh Monarchs

With two riders missing, riders who were capable of doing well in this match, and a young replacement at no. 7, we headed for Berwick without a great deal of optimism for our final League Cup match.

As it turned out we gave an excellent performance and could well have won, our best Shielfield display for some time. Our five regulars all gated and scored consistently well, and when we led 41-37 after heat 13 we believed we were in with a good chance.

We didn’t have favourable gates over the last two races – 2 and 4 were the profitable ones – and we slipped to a 2-point defeat, but we still had to feel the team had excelled itself against a team which hadn’t dropped a home point in the competition.

It didn’t start well with a 5-1 against after Craig had lifted in heat 1. We won the toss and it would have been better if we hadn’t!

Micky kept up the form of last Friday with a win in heat 2, and we had the next two race winners as well through Matthew and Andrew! Amazing.

Andrew’s next ride in heat 6 though saw him into the tapes, and he must learn to roll like Ricky Ashworth and miss the tapes! We lost that 5-1 to go 6 down, but immediately hit back through Matthew and Theo in heat 7 with a maximum over the rather feeble Alden.

Matthew won heat 8 in his rider replacement outing and Micky took a third after King had fallen, so we were level again. Andrew beat the formidable Complin in heat 10, and we swapped 4-2s in 10 and 11. Still level!

We shared heat 12 when Complin passed Theo with Micky again taking a good third, and we watched impressed as Cook and Tully swept past Ashworth off the second bend in heat 13 to put us 4 ahead.

Heat 14 looked good but Matthew could do no better than third, in spite of much effort, and with Craig unavailable due to a bike problem for the last race, we lost a 4-2 to go down to a defeat but a very honourable one indeed.