DISAPPOINTING SINGLE-POINT LOSS

NEWS Friday 22nd April 2011, 0:20am

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Scotwaste Monarchs stumbled to a disappointing 44-45 loss against new boys Leicester tonight, in spite of having held a 9-point advantage with five races left.

Alex Harkess said at the post-match discussion ?Good luck to Leicester, they deserved to win. But from an Edinburgh point of view it was a poor performance and we must do better.?

The problems which have been evident all season were all too obvious again ? Kalle Katajisto is well out of touch and the reserves are contributing very little. This is putting too much pressure on the other four who know that if they drop more than a few points, the match result will be in doubt.

Of course concentrating on Monarchs' problems too much is not very fair to Leicester because they did very well indeed. Russian star Sergei Darkin was quite brilliant, taking a ride to get used to the track and then staying unbeaten after that. He shepherded home John Oliver in heat 11 and Richard Sweetman in the final race, and looked commanding throughout.

Richard Sweetman came good, Richard Hall and John Oliver contributed well and the Lions' reserves outscored the home men 9-4.

In spite of another early fall while leading by Katajisto, Monarchs still seemed to have matters in hand when they led by 9 points after 9 heats. Had Wolbert and Wethers recorded their third 5-1 in heat 10, Darkin would have been eligible for a TR, but in fact Sweetman won that won.

Lions did take a heat 11 5-1 over Craig Cook though, and they then supplied the final three race winners, taking a last race 5-1. A last bend bid by Andrew Tully to burst inside Darkin ended in exclusion, and there was no serious argument with that decision.

Oddly enough Leicester had intended to track Richard Hall in the last race, but the referee said he wasn't eligible. This was probably wrong as Hall was third highest average rider of the six men who rode, but in any case most felt that Sweetman was really the man for the job. That proved to be correct.

Monarchs now head for Newport hoping they might get a better result.