Fixture Problems

NEWS Friday 29th April 2016, 9:27pm

by Toby Lerone

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Friday's postponement of the match at Armadale could create fixture problems for the Border Roofing Monarchs.

It was an early call-off for the match against Redcar with the decision taken at eight o'clock on Friday morning. There had been rain, sleet and snow throughout the night on top of a very wet week and by the morning the track was absolutely saturated.

Co-promoter John Campbell takes up the story. "I got a report from the track early on Friday morning and it wasn't good. I did have discussions with Ronnie Anderson and Alan Bridgett, the men on site, if we should gamble on the weather forecast being correct and hoping the sun would be shining by lunchtime but in the end we decided that the track was just too wet and, with the temperature so low, there would be little drying unless the sun was shining."

"As it turned out I was at the stadium at three this afternoon and it was still raining quite heavily at that time. The track was worse than it had been in the morning. The rain petered out shortly thereafter but as I left the stadium at 4 the temperature was three degrees."

The visit of the Bears must now be fitted into our calendar but long gone are the days that fixtures could be slotted into the next available date. Campbell continued, "It is never easy to come up with a date for a restaging. Generally you have to consider Elite League fixtures and now , more often than not, matches in Denmark on a Friday. The Bears have three Danes in their team so I'm in discussion with Redcar promoter Brian Havelock to sort a new date."

The Border Roofing Monarchs management are keen to stress that no one who has purchased an advance ticket for any of our postponed matches should look se out. First of all these tickets are valid for the re-staging of the postponed event. If that is not convenient then they are valid, until used, for any other match at Armadale this season. Finally if that is not possible we will happily refund. Any such requests should be sent by email to the Club.

We are checking the record books but we cannot believe that we have ever had three of our first five matches at the start of a season postponed due to the weather. As a Club we are always keen to break records, apart from this one.