The Spring Is Ours Again!

NEWS Sunday 28th March 2010, 8:23pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

What a dramatic finale we saw at Ashfield today when the Scotwaste Monarchs took a dozen points from the final two heats to win the Spring Trophy on aggregate.

A 12-3 advantage in heats 14 and 15 neatly turned the tables after what had happened at the end of our home leg. Certainly when we lost a heat 13 5-1 to go 33-45 down, 6 behind on aggregate, most of us thought the game was up.

Heat 14 was promising though and we had our first TR opportunity. Kalle, at times irresistible round Ashfield, flew to the front round the first turn and with ace team man Matthew protecting, the 8 was in the bag barring disasters.

That edged us 1 point ahead again on aggregate, and we had Ryan and Matthew against the brilliant James Grieves and the formidable McGowan.

Never fear, Ryan led all the way and Matthew even managed a third off the very unfavourable gate one. So it was celebration time again, rather a good way to do it.

There were many reasons why we might NOT have won over the two legs - the absence of Wolbert (Aaron Summers has ridden better but his level of effort as guest could not be questioned), the mistakes / misfortunes which saw us lose 8 points off our lead on Saturday, the fact that Tigers had two TRs to our one - but we don't need any excuses!

Fisher was tremendous though even he could not do much off gate one in heat 13. Wethers beat Grieves, shepherded Kalle and kept McGowan at the back, and Kalle won three heats, and also fell while on a paid win.

Aaron had one fall when attempting an extravagant outside pass, but came back for a crucial heat 12 win. Andrew had one very good team ride with Max but will be disappointed with his day, and Max did reasonably well to take some early points.

For Jozsef there were no points to be had and he will need to speed up a bit as he settles to his UK career.

But it is mostly plus points for now, and we look forward to welcoming Kevin back for his first UK points of the season on Friday. There are tougher tests to come but once again we have a team with spirit and talent.

Full Result Details