Away Points Imperative

PREVIEW Thursday 12th July 2018, 11:41am

by Graham Muncie

  Edinburgh Monarchs

It's another trip down the A1 for the Staggs Bar Monarchs as we head to Teesside to take on the Redcar Bars in Championship action.

With the shortened fixture list the Monarchs now find themselves more than halfway through their away fixtures (in fact after tonight that will be 2/3rd complete) and with only 1 away point to show for it so far then it is starting to become imperative that this is rectified.

While the league table is always false when there is such a difference in amount of home and away fixtures raced should we continue to struggle on the road then there will be no margin for error at Armadale with a lot of tough fixtures to come.

In saying that there is optimism that Redcar is the kind of arena where we are set up to do well. Most of our team can look to positive results their in the past and hopefully this is a barometer of things to come. At the top end Ricky and Erik should certainly have no fear of the place. Erik having raced to 5 unbeaten races in the recent Fours and Ricky having recorded 15 points in our last visit there.

Elsewhere Mark also has shown a liking for the Media Prime track and with Joel and Max having experience of the place there should be no surprises for them. Josh will be looking to keep up his impressive form since moving into the main body of the team and while you would expect that Victor would be no stranger to the track from his Newcastle days a quick look at the speedway updates site show he actually missed all 3 matches there in 2016.

For the home men as seems to be the case often it has been a season of flux with line-up changes being forced due to injury more often than would be liked. The team appeared to be settling down with Tobias Busch returning only for the former Monarch to suffer concussion meaning he misses out tonight and rider replacement operates allowing the Anderson brothers, Dimitri Berge and Jordan Stewart extra rides an allowance that potentially strengthens the Bears overall.

The rest of the team is as scheduled with the North east men looking for exciting duo Ben Barker and Thomas Jorgensen to lead the way, back up will come form combative elder Anderson Jonas and recent signing Berge and with a team built on a strength in depth manner the reserves look strong with Mikkel Anderson and Jordan Stewart both having had excellent matches so far this season not least at home to Glasgow for Stewart where he romped to a paid 17 score.

So another tough night looks in prospect but one in which it has to be said the Monarchs will travel south in search of points, it is starting to get to the stage of the season where these are a must if we are to maintain our proud record of playoff qualification year on year.

Can our boys do it? Keep an eye on the Monarchs website to find out.

Full Result Details