What the Fork Monarchs regained lost pride at Ashfield, performing far better than they had in the home fixture in spite of the absence of James Sarjeant and the 46-44 scoreline represents one of their best road displays for some time.
Captain fantastic Sam Masters, with an exceptional six-ride paid maximum, provided the lead but everyone did their bit in a fightback which saw Monarchs come from 12 points down at Heat 8 to force a last heat decider.
Both Josh Pickering and Kye Thomson performed like high-class heat leaders and everyone else was pushing for points.
Alex Harkess, Monarchs’ team manager (pictured left by Nigel Duncan with co-promoter John Campbell), said: “They did very well and were very unfortunate early doors. Lasse got excluded in Heat 1 for touching the tapes which he never did, even the starting marshal said he didn’t touch them. He was brought off in his second so he had no points and he was feeling worse for wear, but we picked him up and he got a good point in his last ride. Jacob also did well, and loaned his bike to William for Heat 14.
“Once again once we turned the page we were a different team and we had Sam winning every race and Josh looking like he was going to win every race. And Kye was winning races as well. We had six of the last seven race winners.
“We just ran out of heats. If there had been another couple of races I’m sure we would have won. If we’d had James Sarjeant I’m sure we would have won.
“There are not many teams who will come to Ashfield and score 44 points but we were disappointed to only score 44 points and we had them rattled.”
Glasgow Tigers (46): Craig Cook 11+0, Danyon Hume 6+2, Ulrich Ostergaard 6+0, Benjamin Basso 7+1, Tom Brennan 6+1, Broc Nicol 2+1, Connor Bailey 8+2
Edinburgh Monarchs (44): Sam Masters 18+0, Lasse Fredriksen 2+0, Paco Castagna 3+1, Kye Thomson 10+0, Josh Pickering 9+1, Jacob Hook 2+1, William Lawson 0+0
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