Edinburgh Monarchs v Stoke Potters

REPORT Friday 12th May 2006, 10:00pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Monarchs piled up easily their biggest score of the season against a Stoke team which provided mediocre opposition.

There were a number of heats which provided very easy home 5-1's with a big gap between the Monarchs' pair and the opposition. Alan Mogridge returned to the Potters' team after a back injury but had as poor a meeting as he has ever had at Armadale, while new signing Trent Leverington also struggled.

There was little compensation at reserve, and it was left to Lemon, Kessler and the hard riding Clews to provide such opposition as there was.

We were 9-3 up after two uneventful heats, then Kessler led heat 3. William Lawson was riding with a puncture and obviously struggling, so it looked like a heat loss until Kessler fell at the end of lap 3. That gifted us a 4-2 with Matthew taking the win.

Rusty and Derek took a 5-1 by a large margin from heat 4, and William with air in his back tyre romped home in heat 5. Moggo again got nowhere near our 5-1 pair in heat 6, with Henrik looking very happy on his new engine, and we were now 27-9 ahead in a very one-sided contest.

Kessler took a TR but heat 7 was easy for Rusty, so Stoke took a 5-3 with Sean not showing much of his recent good form.

Heat 8 was the easiest 5-1 yet, and heat 9 was the same as William and Matthew rode together, a long way clear of Mogridge.

Precious little had happened up to this point, but Paul Clews suddenly got the hang of things and gave Theo a battle in heat 10. He burst past at one point, only for Theo to cut back into the lead with a disdainful look over his shoulder.

Mark Lemon took a TR in heat 11 but a fine first bend gave Rusty his third win. Clews won heat 12 after a good battle with Matthew, and Derek passed Evans for the point but lost his own unbeaten record.

Heat 13 was worth watching as Lemon held off the double challenge of Henrik and Rusty, and we had a third shared heat running as William won heat 14. Sean's poor run continued as he lost third place to Luke Priest who passed him.

Finally Lemon took his second win over Rusty and Henrik, in a match completed in 70 minutes. Just the job on a freezing cold night.

HALMOND ENGINEERING MONARCH OF THE MATCH: Theo Pijper.

Full Result Details