Good fightback after a slow start

REPORT Friday 20th June 2025, 9:47pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Stellar Monarchs lost 40-50 at Redcar tonight, and didn't provide any of the first five race winners. At that stage they were ten points down. Thereafter though they came right back into the match with heat winners in heats 6, 7 and 9 followed by a heat 11 5-1 which must have had the home side rattled.

Team manager John Campbell said "The ten-point defeat doesn't reflect how we came back into the match, to the extent that the tac sub plan in heat 12 was blown apart! At the outset I couldn't see how we were going to beat any of their top guys, but then we got going it actually didn't prove so difficult to beat them. Passing was exceptionally difficult.

"There was evidence from the whole team that if they can make starts they will win, but we just didn't make enough starts."

Given the strength of Redcar's top three it was not a bad tally for the Monarchs to win 6 of the 10 heats after that slow opening. Paco Castagna took two wins with some remarkable drive out of the turns, and recent signing Michael Palm Toft was probably the visitors' best gater as he had his best outing so far.

Paco might have had another in heat 10 but a last bend mistake let in Charles Wright. The opening pair had a victory each and Kye Thomson repeated his performance from Oxford of scoring in every race, finishing with that heat 11 win.

While Redcar always get decent performances from their heat leaders, they were indebted to their young reserves Jody Scott and Ace Pijper who hit a paid 15 total between them.

There was a curious incident in heat 12 when to Monarchs' frustration they seemed to make the start only to realise the red lights were on. It seemed these were actually put on accidentally before the tapes rose, and so there was no option but to stop the heat.

So Monarchs need to win by more than 10 next Friday in their next match when Redcar visit Armadale, if they are to take all the points on offer. Tough against a team who have won on their previous two visitors, but nobody will be regarding that as impossible.

Full Result Details