Ryan Fisher battles with Covatti Image Credit: Ron MacNeill

Poor Performance At Foxhall

REPORT Thursday 22nd September 2016, 9:42pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Ipswich have certainly improved recently but the Border Roofing Monarchs should have been able to give them a better run for their money than they did in the first leg of the Playoff quarter final, a disappointing 58-32 defeat.

Looking for something positive to say, John Campbell commented “Mark Riss at least improved throughout the night and was highly competitive in heat 15 till he fell off. Sam was OK but unhappy with some of the starts, and the rest of them were very disappointing.

“I said beforehand if we were 20 points behind we would still have a chance, thinking we would more likely get within 10. But it’s difficult to get the kind of score we’ve had tonight and suggest we are going to pull it back.

“It was all on the gate apart from heat 15 funnily enough. There was no passing – I’m not suggesting our boys were about to pass anyone but the thing was we didn’t make a start.

“We can’t put the result down to Dan Bewley being missing, obviously. We’ll be bringing the boys together tomorrow and having a chat about what we can do to improve, then try to get a big score against a Peterborough team with strong heat leaders.”

We fell behind in heat 3 and didn’t manage a race winner until Kevin Wolbert at last made a start in heat 9. Our next one came from Sam Masters in heat 11, a race advantage with Ryan Fisher third.

Mark Riss had a good win in heat 14 but we threw away another race advantage there when Clegg fell on the last lap when third. This earned Mark a heat 15 ride alongside Sam. Sam briefly led the last heat but lost out rather unluckily to end the night on another low note.