Tough without Cookie at Poole

REPORT Sunday 20th August 2023, 8:18pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

There were no league points to be had for the Stellar Monarchs from our match at Poole this evening. We lost by a fairly hefty 59-31 but in the course of a rather drawn-out meeting we managed to play our part in some entertaining racing.

Team manager John Campbell, after his 8 hour drive from home, said to Pirates TV "We've had a tough season. You can't come to probably the best team in the league when you've got your no. 1 missing and no suitable guest, without it being a very difficult match. We did get one or two decisions going against us."

Monarchs were forced to use rider replacement for Craig Cook and that yielded just one point. It was a bad start, 4-14 after three heats, but the first boost came from Josh Pickering's great win from the back in heat 4 against Steve Worrall.

Kye Thomson also beat Worrall in winning heat 7, flying round him on the opening bends. In between these two race wins, Josh suffered an awful decision in heat 6 when Kyle Newman came down on the opening bends and came off trying to squeeze through on the outside. An obvious all-4 decision seemed inevitable, and Poole manager Middleditch agreed, but the ref threw Josh out of the heat.

Paco Castagna came down in heat 8 when there seemed a chance he was going ahead, but it was Josh up next to win heat 9 from the Cook brothers.

Poole then took two 5-1s to put the match well beyond doubt, but the heat of the night was probably heat 13. Pickering made a terrible start but flew after the Poole boys, with passing and re-passing between Josh and Richard Lawson before Josh just got squeezed out.

Bastain Borke got some reward for his efforts with a second place in heat 14 and we finished the match with an advantage as Josh Pickering raced a long way clear in the last heat. Kye Thomson also made it into double figures with third place in our only race advantage.

Full Result Details