WELL BEATEN - BUT SAM'S BACK TOMORROW

NEWS Thursday 20th August 2015, 10:02pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Well you can't be good all the time - and we weren't tonight at Owlerton where we went down 51-39 to the Sheffield Tigers, a fair reflection of the match.

It was our worst score of the season, and this came against a team missing key riders in Jason Garrity and Arthur Sissis.

John Campbell said "We have no excuses, we were just poor. We'll need to raise our game for tomorrow's match with Somerset, but I 'm sure we will."

We lost a bad 5-1 in heat two in which our reserves got themselves tangled up as Rob Branford's bike failed. We pulled back two points in heat four through Craig Cook (fastest time of the season) and Branford who got a good point ahead of Bates, but that proved to be our only race advantage of the evening.

We were six down by heat 8, eight down by heat 10 and twelve down by heat 12! So we have to congratulate the Yorkshiremen on an excellent display - they probably could not believe they won so comfortably against the table-toppers.

We did OK out of Sam Master's rider replacement rides with ten points, but we are still happier with Sam in the side, and happily he will be in action tomorrow after coming through a practise session at Leicester.

All of our riders had at least one poor race, with Craig beaten three times out of four meetings by the speedy Kurtz. Craig did score in every race, which is more than anyone else did, and he won two.

Justin Sedgmen was steady enough but just had one race win, as did Kevin Wolbert in his first race.

Erik Riss probably had most reason to be pleased, starting with a last place but improving with every ride and winning heat 14.

The least said the better about our reserves, with Rob Branford making great starts but never looking like holding position.

Kurtz was tremendous for Sheffield, as was recent signing Nicolai Klindt who had his best UK meeting of the season.

Josh Bates was the most exciting rider of the night, his win in heat 8 being the best race as he passed not only Branford but also Sedgmen later in the race.

Full Result Details