Bandits in town as we ride without the skipper

NEWS Wednesday 25th April 2018, 5:00pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Staggs Bar Monarchs are hanging on by their fingernails to the hope of gaining a qualifying place for the Championship Shield semi-finals – and it is clearly essential that we win on Friday. It will help if we can prevent the Bandits getting a point.

At some points in our history that would not have been a major problem but with new boys in the team still settling in to their new environment, and a home match already lost, we have the additional difficulty this week of being without in-form captain Erik Riss. He will be on his way to his semi-final in the European Championship which is at Gorican, Croatia on Saturday.

Monarchs bring in as guest replacement King’s Lynn’s Danish rider Thomas Jorgensen who has a decent Armadale record. The other team change sees Max Ruml and Joel Andersson swap positions to give Joel greater protection while he learns the ropes.

Ruml discovered at Glasgow on Sunday that he had a bent frame which probably explains his lowest score so far, while Josh Pickering may have taken delivery by Friday of his new engine.

Our home team manager Alex Harkess says “We’ve switched the second strings partly because Max seems to improve as the night goes on, and at number 2 he finishes his night early.

“Berwick’s visit is an ideal fixture for us, because we have got to start proving ourselves. I’ve said this over many years – winning is a habit, but so is losing. We’ve got to get into that winning habit, and make sure that every time we turn up at Armadale we have the winning habit in our head. We have to do that and we have to start on Friday.”

THIS WEEK’S MATCH:

Friday 27th April Staggs Bar Monarchs v Berwick Bandits (Championship Shield) 7:30pm

Teams for Friday:

STAGGS BAR MONARCHS: Ricky Wells, Joel Andersson, Mark Riss, Max Ruml, Thomas Jorgensen (guest), Matt Williamson, Josh Pickering.

BERWICK KLS BANDITS: Aaron Summers, Kevin Doolan (captain), John Lindman, David Howe, Nikolaj Busk Jakobsen, Jye Etheridge, Dany Gappmaier.

Full Result Details