Well Beaten At Ashfield

REPORT Saturday 29th April 2017, 11:49pm

by Graham Muncie

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Parsons Peebles Monarchs suffered their first defeat of the season going down heavily 57-34 to the Glasgow Tigers at Ashfield on Saturday night.

On a night where coming from the back was particularly difficult the Monarchs were routinely last from the gate and could make very little impact on a fired up and on form Tigers outfit.

The match had started promisingly enough with the score all square at 12-12 after 4 races. Glasgow also being undermanned having lost the services of flying Finn Nike Lunna after a high speed crash in heat 3 which saw the youngster heading to hospital for x-rays on his hand and we hope for positive news for Nike.

The tide was to turn at this point though as the Tigers then hammered in 3 consecutive 5-1 advantages. Heat 5 being a particular sore one for the Monarchs as a comfortable looking shared heat turned to disaster when both Sam Masters and Josh Pickering came down. Masters hitting the fence heavily and on another night he may have pulled out of the remainder of the meeting.

A share of the spoils then heat advantage due to a tactical double points ride stemmed the tide but this was temporary as the Tigers turned the screw again over the final heats with ex Monarch Dan Bewley the star of the show racing to his first maximum at Championship level.

Monarch’s co-promoter Alex Harkess was philosophical after the match saying ‘We had a reasonable start but the wheels came off with the crash with Josh and Sam. We were not competitive out of the starts and we only had Mark who seemed capable of winning a race and on the night we just weren’t competitive despite the boys putting their heart into it we could not get going at all.’

So a tough night for the Monarchs with only Mark Riss excelling with a paid 16 score. Glasgow are a strong outfit particularly at home and this will not be the only time they turn someone over this season the Monarchs will now regroup and look to get back to winning ways next Friday when Workington visit Armadale.

Full Result Details