Rick and Theo Ride on Friday

NEWS Tuesday 29th March 2016, 4:15pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

At the opening match of our season on Friday, we will see Workington’s Ricky Wells and Berwick’s Theo Pijper lining up for the Border Roofing Monarchs against the Belle Vue Aces.

They will be riding as a pair and standing in for Sam Masters and Max Clegg who have to ride on Friday evening for their Elite League team Wolverhampton at Coventry.

Up until now we have been very successful in avoiding losing out in fixture clashes, and that will once again be the case this season, but as we are staging a challenge fixture the Elite match does take precedence on Friday.

We were originally taking on the mighty Aces on Saturday but because some of their riders were struggling to make travel arrangements to get to Poland, we switched back to our normal Friday night, even though we knew we’d have to race without our two stars. It’s disappointing for them and us but we do want to see all of the riders the Aces are sending.

Ricky Wells is one of the few riders capable of performing up to Sam’s level round Armadale, and our own Theo (who had his Testimonial at Armadale just over a year ago) has a higher average than Max – we feel his inclusion is justified when you see the tremendous lineup the Aces have!

Supporters will have noticed the exciting debut our new no. 7 Dan Bewley made last night in the National League, scoring 11+1 in an away match at Cradley. The number of riders starting out with a double figure score is very small indeed!

Max scored a 15-point maximum for Cradley in the same match, but he and Sam have been thwarted in their hope to ride tonight in the Elite League at home to Belle Vue. The match (at one point scheduled for Sky) has been postponed.