Is The Only Way Essex?

PREVIEW Saturday 19th May 2018, 12:30pm

by Graham Muncie

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Staggs Bar Monarchs are on the road again this weekend making the long trip south to take on the Lakeside Hammers in SGB Championship action.

The Monarchs will be looking to build on a promising start to their league campaign with 4 points taken from our home and away clashes against Peterborough so far. This will be a different kettle of fish to coin a phrase though as the Hammers look like a powerhouse outfit with the capabilities of a top of the table finish in their sights.

Making the move to this level of British speedway for the first time since they were known as Arena Essex this will be a trip into the unknown for the majority of the Monarchs line-up. Only Matt Williamson having any recent knowledge of the circuit from our usual line-up, this coming last year when Matt visited with Buxton when our hosts were in the National League. Matt acquitted himself well with a 13 point score that night and hopefully another strong performance will be on the cards in this one.

For the rest of the Monarchs septet they may well have to look to our guest at number 1 for any tips and tricks on how best to get round the Arena Essex Raceway. That guest is former Hammers number one Eddie Kennett. Kennett is a known specialist around the Essex raceway and we will be looking for him to replicate the double figure scores that Ricky Wells has been putting in for us almost everywhere we have been while Ricky is away in Slovenia on GP qualifying duty and we wish Ricky all the best in that also.

For the rest of the Staggs Bar men it will be interesting to see how they take to the task, one thing that may work slightly in our favour is that the dimensions at Lakeside are not wholly dissimilar to that of Armadale so this may make the task a little easier.

What will not make the task any easier is the strength of the home men. The Lakeside promotional team having cannily built a team based on a powerhouse top of the line with Nick Morris and Richard Lawson a match for anyone anywhere then filling the lower reaches of the team with known Lakeside performers from the National League last year in Ben Morley and Alfie Bowtell.

The intrigue in the Lakeside outfit comes from the British core middle order of Kyle Newman, Adam Ellis and Zach Wajtknecht. Newman is of course a well known face in our division now having been around for a few years most notably with Plymouth. For Ellis and Wajtknecht it is a step back in the Championship after time spent exclusively in the Premiership and National League respectively and both have hit the ground running with Ellis currently averaging in excess of 8 and Zach not far off 5.5 in their meeting so far this season.

So a tough task lies ahead as we aim to be the first team to take anything from a visit to Essex this year. In fact only one team has stopped the home men from hitting the 50 point mark so far and that was Ipswich in the 2nd leg of their KO cup match which could have been argued was a dead rubber after the Hammers had won by 19 at Foxhall the night before.

That is not to say the Monarchs head south with nay less than a point as a target to being home…. Can we do it?

Full Result Details