BRILLIANT BORDERS VICTORY

REPORT Saturday 1st September 2012, 11:01pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Well what a surprising sport speedway can be, and what a resilient team the Scotwaste Monarchs are. With an inspirational guest's performance from James Grieves, and a totally solid showing all down the line, we took all four points from Berwick with a 50-40 win.

Not a single last place from the top five is a remarkable achievement on an away track (we previously did it at Newport in 2011). They were all great. And while Marcel Helfer sometimes looks as though he's out for a Sunday stroll, that doesn't mean he can't come up with the results – as at Sheffield, he joined Matthew for a vital heat 14 5-1.

For the FOURTH away match in succession, we started with a 5-1 as Grieves led Sneddon home ahead of rider replacement Seb Alden – Bandits used their guest Kus in place of injured Dane Nicki Barrett, with r/r for Ashworth.

Although this was instantly reversed in heat 2, we never allowed Bandits to get their noses in front.

It was as crucial as ever to get ahead early, and there was some superb work round the first two turns from our riders. Several times they positioned themselves to get past faster gating home riders out of the second corner.

The only overtake I can recall after the first half lap was by Tully on Aspegren in heat 6, the best race of the night as Andrew then chased down Bellego and Aspegren tried to regain second place.

But there were other heats when there was hard work to be done, such as heat 8 when Derek Sneddon was under strong pressure from Micky Dyer, and an excellent heat 13 ride by Grieves to hold off Alden.

We did very well to lead 35-31 with four races left, and then entered the key part of the match. Theo Pijper did so well to force his way ahead down the back straight in heat 12, ahead of Kus and Dyer, the latter having impressively won his previous heat in the fastest time of the night.

Then came that cool and crafty win for Grieves in heat 13, with Andrew third to give us a 42-36 lead.

Gate 1 can be awkward at Berwick but how good it was to see Matthew hit the first turn from there in front, with wee Marcel sailing into second as well. They made no mistake and we were home with a 10-point lead.

It just needed a second place in the last heat to give us all four points and we comfortably shared that behind the speedy Alden.

Not really the expected result, unless you are quite an optimist, but very well deserved. The Bandits took it sportingly with Seb Alden and Micky Dyer to the fore in shaking the hands of the winning team.

Full Result Details