Edinburgh Monarchs v Sheffield Tigers

PREVIEW Thursday 22nd June 2006, 12:00pm

by Dennis Wallace

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Sheffield return to Armadale this Friday just three weeks after their Premier Trophy visit when we beat them 54-39. So what's different about this match? Well for a start both teams will be at full strength so will not need to revert to Rider Replacement (R/R) for missing riders.

In the last match R/R for William Lawson produced 7+2 for the Monarchs while Sheffield only managed 2+1 for the missing Ben Wilson. On the face of it Sheffield have more scope to improve on those figures than Edinburgh. Last time we had a specific score we needed to better to take the bonus point but this time it's simply a question of building up as big a lead as we can to take to Owlerton later in the season.

Sheffield were a real mixture in the last meeting. Andre Compton looked to be in blistering form until he ran a poor last in the crucial heat 15. Emiliano Sanchez was unbeaten from his first two rides then failed to beat an opponent in his next two, one of them when he was crucially on a TR! Kyle Legault beat nobody apart from a heat 7 win when he headed home Rusty Harrison who had had to go from 15 metres back after touching the tapes. Sheffield's two reserves, Paul Cooper and Benji Compton, struggled all evening on a track which looked completely foreign to them. Ricky Ashworth scored consistently apart from in his first ride. So trying to assess the outcome of this match is not easy.

One of the reasons the Tigers scored as many as 39 points was the 1-8 they managed in heat 13 which certainly set the stage for an exciting climax. This time we should be looking for more than the 54 points we scored in search of the bonus point because we tend to struggle as many teams do at Sheffield although we have had some decent scores there in recent times.

To build a big lead you need to have the team firing on all cylinders and with William back we are capable of doing that particularly given the boost of a 61 point total against Berwick last week. On the basis of what we saw three weeks ago only Andre Compton looks like threatening major damage but he relied heavily on gating last time and didn't look nearly as impressive when behind. The fast starting Ricky Ashworth must be contained again and the rest of the Sheffield team must be confined to meagre pickings. Every rider in the Monarchs' team apart from Sean Stoddart won at least one race on the Tigers' last visit with Derek Sneddon topping the scorechart with 16+1 from 7 rides. From results so far the prospects for bonus points are not good. It would be reassuring if we could produce a result which would give us a comfortable margin in the return match this time.

It seems we may be inundated with Tigers this year at Armadale. If we win through to the next round of the Knock-Out Cup next Tuesday at Newport, Sheffield will be back again for the second round clash. This would give us three matches at home against the Sheffield Tigers to add to the four visits of the Glasgow Tigers and one visit of the Mildenhall Fen Tigers - eight Tigers matches in all (or sixteen if you count the away fixtures!).