Last heat 5-1 Image Credit: Nigel Truscott

A LAST-GASP POINT GAINED

NEWS Saturday 25th July 2015, 10:59pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The Border Roofing Monarchs trailed all the way at Plymouth tonight before a last heat 5-1 from our best two performers, Craig Cook and guest Brady Kurtz, salvaged a point from a 42-48 defeat.

John Campbell said “It was a dreadfully disappointing meeting. Craig was brilliant, and Brady Kurtz I’d say probably exceeded him in his brilliance because whereas Craig did it from the gate, and fast, Brady battled in a couple of races to get to the front. He was baulked on the first turn in heat 1 and was left with nowhere to go.

“Sedgy did OK, Max had one good ride and Rob was a bit steadier than he had been last night.

“I’m sure we all felt we were capable of winning here but the track was super-slick, and if you missed the start and weren’t clever enough to nip in on the second bend then you were basically a goner.

“Gate 4 was absolutely hopeless, there was no possibility of winning off there.

“We just didn’t make the gate often enough. A disappointing night overall.”

Losing the toss meant we had gate 4 in three of the first 4 heats, in which Plymouth took all the race wins and led by 16-8 at that point. We never got closer than 4 points thereafter.

Brady Kurtz was our first race winner in heat 5, backed by Sedgmen for a 5-1. Craig Cook then added another track record to his collection, a new time of 48.12 on the small circuit.

However we conceded another 5-1 as our German pair missed out. Again we edged back into it with 4-2s from Sedgmen and Branford, then Cook and Clegg (a good point for Max against Todd Kurtz).

Kevin Wolbert, who had a disappointing night, managed to win heat 10 but it was a shared race as was the next one through Brady Kurtz again, with Sedgmen succumbing to the curse of gate 4.

When we lost a heat 12 5-1 to Simota and Holder, the game was almost up. A 4-2 in heat 13 was more than wiped out by a heat 14 1-5, which left the top two needing the 5 points for one match point, better than nothing.

Incredibly over the final 11 heats, the only home race winner was Sam Simota in heats 7, 12 and 14. Simota had scored paid 15 last week from reserve so he has clearly run into form and is making starts. We couldn’t provide enough backup to our race winners to close that gap.