New Team sponsor for Monarchs

NEWS Monday 26th March 2018, 8:00pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Today is precisely 70 years on from Monarchs’ first ever fixture at Bristol, and as befits such a day we are announcing that we have a new team sponsor for the 2018 season. This will be the famous, award winning Staggs Bar in Musselburgh.

There is of course a speedway connection because the proprietor Nigel Finlay has been a follower of Speedway since the 1960s, and regularly sponsors one of the team race jackets each season. As well as being Monarchs’ 70th, it is the 160th birthday this year of Staggs Bar.

Nigel commented “I’m absolutely buzzing with it. You can quote me as saying it’s something I never expected to do but I feel quite privileged and a wee bit uber-excited about the whole thing! I’ve followed speedway for some time, but have had work commitments – I’m going to have to re-shuffle my shifts now!

“We always take one of the race jacket sponsors and at this year’s launch show I ended up sitting next to Dougie Newlands. We discussed what might be involved, I made phone calls to my brother and my other half, and I thought what a privilege and a chance of a lifetime to do this. It is Monarchs’ 70th year, and it is the 160th year of Staggs Bar, so there’s a nice wee tie-up there.”

Just prior to the announcement of the sponsorship, Staggs will receive awards after another successful year. Finlay explained “Monarchs have been quite successful in recent years and we have been bestowed with awards for our beer! I’ve run out of wall space for our awards. On the night we announce our sponsorship of the Monarchs we will also be getting awards from the Edinburgh, Lothian and Border branches of Camra.

“We go forward from that to the Scottish Final now, which we won in 2016. Nationally we won the Best Pub in the UK in 1998 which is twenty years ago now. We are just a wee back-street boozer but I like to do things right, a bit of attention to detail. Look after the beer and make sure the customers are happy. Just like running speedway is about winning things and entertaining your fans.”

Explaining his background in the sport Nigel said “My brother used to take me to Old Meadowbank in the mid-sixties, I’d be about 7 or 8 which is really at the tail end of the Meadowbank era. I can’t remember much about it apart from getting hit in the face if you didn’t duck, standing at the fence!

“I remember the bus in Musselburgh picking up outside Luca’s on the supporters’ but to get to Coatbridge. It took forever on the old bus on the A8. I do recall sitting in the stand at Coatbridge. My brother went to sea in ’69 and then it folded after that.

“I missed 1977, it wasn’t until the summer of 1979 that I picked it up again just by chance when someone said ‘Do you fancy going to the Speedway?’

“The smell, the sound, I was buzzing with it. From then on I probably didn’t miss a meeting for about 13 years, I remember missing Silver Weddings and goodness knows all what, I was the only cousin who wasn’t there! You were so enthusiastic about it, the team wasn’t brilliant but when George Hunter arrived in ’80-81 there was a connection with my younger days.

“He rode with Neil Collins who couldn’t gate but Geordie used to take them out wide, and Neil would zip up the inside. You just had to go! There was nothing going to stop me, and I picked up some of the away trips as well.

“When my first child was born it curtailed me a bit, by 1991 I still wanted to go and took the bairn along, which was fine until the bikes started and that was her howling! She was only about a couple of months old. I had work commitments as well but I still followed it in the papers and later through social media.

“I picked up Armadale again and still enjoy it. The smell is not as pungent as it used to be, the noise is not as noisy as it used to be, but that’s progress I guess.”