Edinburgh Monarchs v Sheffield Tigers

REPORT Friday 1st June 2012, 10:00pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

There was no shortage of interest as Edinburgh took their first league points of the year, but didn’t have things all their own way.

The Tigers only had three race winners and that was their downfall, but they certainly never gave up. The Scotwaste Monarchs opened up with a 5-1 after Derek Sneddon had successfully stalked Hugh Skidmore and passed him at the end of the heat, but the visiting reserves hit back with an extremely easy 5-1 in heat 2.

It was their advantage at reserve which enabled Sheffield to keep the match relatively close. Joe Haines deserves better luck than he has had, and Emiliano Sanchez is always popular, so it was good to see them going well.

There was no stopping Craig Cook and Andrew Tully though, both in superb form, and the remaining riders in their top five were all pretty impressive.

Sheffield were on a 5-1 for most of heat 5 until Theo Pijper got himself inside Skidmore on the final lap. The Aussie tried to come back round the outside but spun off, and he had an unlucky night overall.

He also fell on the first corner of heat 8, which looked a tough one on paper for Monarchs, but they took a 5-1 to go 12 points ahead.

That allowed Ricky Wells to take a TR and he did well to move the early leader Matthew Wethers over on the pits bend to take 6, with Joe Haines holding off Pijper and adding a point.

So Monarchs had to build up their lead again, starting with the ride of the night by Cook in heat 10. He was third on the first lap but rode a fast wide pits corner to pass his partner. A lap later he was on the back wheel of Chris Schramm, and turned hard to come through forcefully inside him. Excellent.

Schramm was involved in a different way in the next heat, as Micky Dyer lost his second place and then also lost third, and suffered quite a bit of damage to his machine as Schramm moved to block him regaining ground.

Heat 13 took five attempts, but once the home pair were away there was no catching them. The same riders contested heat 15, with an interesting battle between Cook and Wells in the early stages until Ricky lifted and crashed. He had ridden well though and played his part in a decent night’s action, in spite of a little bit of rather harsh derision from the crowd.

Full Result Details