Speedway – Monarchs have ‘Everest’ to climb

What the Fork Monarchs boss John Campbell saw his men skid to a 22-point defeat in the SGB Championship play-off, semi-final, first leg and admitted: “We weren’t good enough,”

The sides clash again, this time at Armadale, in the return on Friday and Monarchs success-hungry fans will be well aware that their favourites beat Tigers by 20 last Friday in the Knockout Cup semi-final, second-leg to make the final.

Team manager Campbell said “Glasgow have got the track set the way their guys like it and our guys didn’t cope with it at all.

“It was a cold night and it was difficult to get the right set-up for the track, but there’s no excuse. We weren’t good enough, didn’t cope with it.

“Glasgow were far better on the night. Both Richie (Worrall) and Kye (Thomson) were very disappointed with their performances.”

He added: “We had a mountain to climb last week and we did it, I don’t know what you’d say it is this week, Everest probably.

“If we can match our performance of last week when we beat them by 20 then it’s going to be tight.”

Things had looked hopeful at Heat 5 with the score standing at 16-14 to the Tigers, with Jason Edwards (Heat 2) and Sam Masters (Heat 5) having won races.

However over the course of the next seven heats no less than five of these went by a 5-1 margin to Glasgow.

The only bright spots during that spell were a superb ride from the back by Josh Pickering (pictured) to win Heat 7 and a Sam Masters win from the tapes in heat 11.

Tigers were generally better from the starts but even more important was the willingness of the home side to ride high on the bends to get the necessary drive.

Outwith Masters and Pickering, Monarchs weren’t able to get the hang of that route to success.

Tigers had no weak links at all and Cook was exceptional, brilliantly passing Masters in Heat 15 when Monarchs looked on their way to a race advantage.

It wasn’t only Cook., Nicol, Jensen, Nowak and Bailey were coming from the back, riding far better than was evident last Friday.