COOK OUT AS WE GO DOWN AGAIN

NEWS Friday 28th October 2011, 10:43pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Craig Cook was ruled out of our match at Plymouth with a foot injury, lifting and crashing while leading heat 4, but we still took the match to a last heat decider before losing 43-50.

A heat 14 8-1 from Wethers and guest Adam Roynon put us just three points behind going into the last race with a theoretical chance of victory. More realistically we needed a second place to take a match point, and we should certainly have had that, but we did not manage that either.

With Barker having made the start, our pairing of Wethers and Wolbert gated ahead of Wells and should have clinched the point. However Matthew unaccountably slid off on the second bend, bringing down Kevin.

Wethers was lucky to be allowed in the rerun but it did no good anyway, as the Devils gated and took a 5-1 in spite of Wolbert's best efforts.

There were several power cuts in the early stages, leaving only the corner lights (which are run by generators) shining. It looked as though the match might have to be abandoned but eventually they did manage to keep the lights on, running the final heat after the track's curfew time.

We went four up with a Tully-Wethers 5-1 in heat 3, and seemed set to double that lead as Cook and Roynon were ahead for three laps in heat 4. However Cook lifted, clouted the fence on the straight, and fell on the next bend.

He has a painful foot injury caused by a cut when his boot was bent upwards.

Successive 5-1s to Plymouth gave them the lead by heat 7, with Tully having to ride off 15 metres in that race after his bike had stalled.

Wolbert won heat 11 but we gradually lost ground until we were handed that TR chance in heat 14.

The best race of the night was heat 13 in which Wells and Wolbert passed and re-passed for three laps before Barker flew round the pair of them.

We had too many inconsistent riders throughout the match, on top of the loss of Cook. Kalle Katajisto was lively but had a fall in his final ride, while Adam Roynon lost position a few times after good starts. He made amends with his last-to-second ride in heat 14.

We now head off without Cook to our final two matches at Newport and Workington, which would seem to be rather tougher than the Plymouth match.