Monarchs Look To Take A Bite Out Of Tigers

PREVIEW Friday 3rd June 2022, 12:00pm

by Graham Muncie

  Edinburgh Monarchs

It's derby day! The greatest rivalry in British speedway has its latest chapter this weekend starting Friday night as the What the Fork Monarchs welcome the Glasgow Tigers in the first leg of the KO Cup quarter final.

Of course, the clubs are no strangers to each other and having already raced home and away against each other both can take confidence from those previous fixtures coming into this weekend.

For Friday's visitors this confidence is well placed having done the double over the Monarchs earlier in the season including a 51-39 romp at Armadale.

The 7 riders in red and white that night all return with the only change being in rider position as Broc Nicol has since dropped to reserve at first replaced in the 1-5 by Danyon Hume but with June's averages now by Connor Bailey.

The Tigers were one of the early season title favourites and this tag looks well justified and there is no apparent weak link in a solid outfit that always looks difficult to take heat advantages off.

Craig Cook, Ulrich Ostergaard, Tom Brennan and Benjamin Basso make up the top 5 alongside Bailey and while Cook and Ostergaard have seen their averages dip slightly this season they were paid for 23 points between them at Armadale 5 weeks ago.

If Cook and Ostergaard's years are starting to show ever so slightly then the youthful exuberance of Basso and Brennan more than make up for it. Basso was a semi finalist in last weeks GP2 event in Prague while on the same evening Brennan was tallying paid 10 including a couple of heat wins at Armadale gusting for Birmingham so both will be a threat in every race, they take part in.

Throw in that reserve pairing of Hume, who defeated Sam Masters on that last visit and Broc Nicol a former double digit point getter at Armadale also and you can see why the Tigers will head East in buoyant mood.

Looking to send them back home with a dent in that confidence is your What the Fork Monarchs. A busy week on the road saw the Monarchs put up very creditable performances gaining a league point at Plymouth and falling one match point on the night short of repeating the feat at Poole.

These performances no doubt were built on the shoulders of captain Sam Masters, 31+1 the league's number 1 tallied over the 2 matches and after a down night by his standards the last time the Tigers were in town Masters will no doubt be looking to show his dominance this evening.

The same can be said for fellow heat leaders Josh Pickering and Kye Thomson both of whom are showing fine form as the season starts to rill towards the halfway point for the Monarchs.

Paco Castagna is this week's match magazine cover man, and he says he is loving life at Armadale and want's to 'let the good times roll' a big score tonight will go a long way towards that.

Lasse Fredriksen misses out a broken shoulder being the outcome of that big off in his second race last week that means extra rides for Paco and our reserves.

Talking of those reserves young Jacob continues his steady improvement and with a paid 11 performance with 2 wins under his belt last week confidence should be high. Joining Hook at reserve will be guest Dillon Ruml, the American an impressive visitor to Armadale so far also.

A big night in store then as both teams look to put a lead together before Saturday's second leg, of course in a derby anything can happen and there are numerous ways to find out exactly how the action unfolds. Tickets are still available on the Monarchs website while pay at the gate is also available. For those that can't make it as always, the match will be live streamed buy your pass from the EM:TV link of the website.

That only leaves one thing and as always, we like to say.

Friday night is speedway night, see you there!

Full Result Details