NO LUCK, NO POINTS AT WORKINGTON

NEWS Saturday 17th April 2010, 11:33pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Fortune did not favour us at Workington where we lost 52-40 to a strengthened Comets' team and took no match points.

Obviously the absence for the whole weekend of Kalle Katajisto for the weekend was hugely damaging to our chances against the Comets, who hadn't won a Premier Trophy match before tonight. But that was not all that went against us.

Max Dilger crashed in heat 2 when he seemed to be riding well and held second place ahead of Craig Cook, and the early diagnosis is that he has broken his collar bone.

And the strengthened Comets? Well they had in-form Rene Bach replacing the out-of-touch Andre Compton who was injured at Armadale - the luck of the game. But they also had struggling Adam Roynon allegedly injured and used rider replacement, a huge boost to their strength on recent form.

In spite of the valiant efforts of Cal McDade we were outscored 20 - 1 in the reserve berths.

That was pretty well insurmountable, but how did we perform amongst the top five?

We can only give a mixed report in the upper echelons. Andrew Tully certainly did well to score 13 which included two wins and a 4-point TR.

Ryan Fisher won heat 1 as he so often does, but then faded a bit, and Kevin Wolbert was always in the hunt but could only win once in five rides.

Matthew Wethers had a disappointing night but there were some promising signs from Jozsef Tabaka. Some of his 5+1 score were gifts but more importantly he was on the pace in every ride and growing in confidence.

We will need to find a pair of reserves for the Newcastle visit as Cal McDade is riding in the NL for King's Lynn.