Heavy loss for Monarchs

Monarchs went down by 57-33 at Berwick tonight, and thereby lost the bonus by a margin of 87-93. The only favourable thing to be said is that Kye Thomson put on a brilliant show as he maintained his great form of this season – he won four races and was involved in some thrilling action.

Team manager Alex Harkess admitted "It was a very disappointing result. As we know at Berwick you've got to make the start and you've got to be competitive at the first and second bend, At the end of the day we only had one rider that we could depend on, and even he ran out of steam eventually but it's a hard track to do seven rides on.

"Kye did very very well but there wasn't enough backup and we are very disappointed."

Kye never shied away from the need to ride the far outside line, which is how things are at Berwick now. Jonatan Grahn did get out in the heavy stuff as well and was rewarded with points in every race, but the others were more circumspect and paid the price.

The loss of the bonus was obviously directly traceable to Dan Thompson's absence and the failure to secure a suitable guest. Rider replacement rides for Dan scored just three points.

The night started with two comfortable home 5-1s before Justin Sedgmen won heat 3 followed by Kye Thomson in heat 4. This was actually an advantage as Jordy Loftus had his best ride of the night and headed Sam Hagon.

Over heats 3 to 7 we matched the Bandits giving some hope that the bonus might be held on to. Three successive 5-1s though put us on the back foot until Kye Thomson pulled off another two wins in heats 12 and 13 – great stuff from the Aussie.

With two heats to go we were level on aggregate but Bandits guest reserve Sam Hagon won heat 14 from Paco Castagna who managed to barge Lasse Fredriksen out of second.

A 5-1 in the final race would have done the trick for the Monarchs but it went the other way, with even Kye running out of steam at this point.

There was probably more passing than we have been used to at Berwick during the evening, but too much of it was not by us. With Dan back tomorrow we will see if we can do a bit better at Glasgow. A win there would win us the section!