Image Credit: Chris Simpson

Bad night at Brum

REPORT Wednesday 22nd May 2019, 11:16pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Staggs Bar Monarchs went down by 36-48 at Birmingham, a disappointing result without question, but even worse than that was a heavy tumble taken by Josh Pickering in heat 15. The race wasn't rerun as the Aussie received on-track treatment, the meeting being abandoned with the 10pm curfew approaching.

Team boss John Campbell said 'Josh had to go to hospital in the ambulance and was talking to the paramedic. We hope we will get good news on his condition.

'It was a poor performance by the team there's no doubt, even with Birmingham's changes I believe we should have got something out of the match. We needed a strong showing from no. 1 but Ricky Wells did something I can't remember seeing him do before which was change his bike mid-meeting. He won his third heat and thought he had things sorted, but then had another pointless ride.'

On a track which got dusty early on there were a few good races. Monarchs' first race winner was Cameron Heeps in heat 4, and he had to pull off a last lap outside overtake on surprise packet Nathan Stoneman to do it.

Heat 5 was another good one as Morris swept round the early leader Sedgmen to take the three points.

Josh Pickering was our second race winner on his tactical sub ride in heat 9, a comfortable 5-1 backed up by Heeps. Two heats later Ricky Wells won his only race which was also the only defeat for home reserve Paco Castagna.

With two heats to go, at 8 points down, we still had a chance of something but a 1-5 loss followed by Josh's pileup was a disappointing end to the night.

New home rider Adam Ellis scored a pretty easy 12-point maximum and now it's fingers crossed for our Aussie ace Josh that his injuries are not too serious.

JOSH PICKERING UPDATE: Josh was released from hospital in the early hours of Thursday morning. Josh sustained some shoulder ligament damage and a sore head in his crash but is otherwise alright. Josh will miss Friday's home match against Glasgow but it is great news that he is relatively unscathed.