What The Fork Monarchs boss John Campbell saw his men crash out of the SGB Championship play-offs to Leicester Lions and admitted: “We were not good enough.”
The Armadale combine were emptied 73-106 on aggregate and team manager Campbell (pictured right with Alex Harkess by Nigel Duncan) admitted: “It’s been a disappointing weekend for us, we thought we would do better. No excuses though.”
The bulk of Monarchs scoring was done by skipper Sam Masters, who won his first four races, and his Aussie countryman Josh Pickering who was battling from the back as usual.
The others chipped in a few points here and there with a trademark Heat 14 victory for Paco Castagna.
There were a few problems along the way, starting at heat one when Nick Morris’s machine reared fiercely at the tapes and threw him off the back. The bike then caught the ever-unlucky Lasse Fredriksen and brought him down. Fredriksen has pain in his forearm and wrist but is probably not too badly damaged.
Morris was ruled out of the meeting and after taking two rides, Fredriksen withdrew also. Masters then admitted that his left shoulder was giving him problems while Pickering and Kye Thomson were both struggling with their machinery.
Masters still won winning heats one and five and Monarchs kept the scores to a 13-17 deficit but the team ran into a bad patch over the next four races.
The high point for Monarchs was Heat 13 with Masters claiming his fourth win and Pickering blasting from the back to give the visitors a 5-1.
Monarchs also took a 4-2 from Heat 14 through Castagna and Jacob Hook against the Thompson twins then lost the final heat in which Pickering managed to head Richie Worrall but Masters finally ran out of steam.
Leicester Lions (53): Nick Morris 0+0, Connor Mountain 6+0, Richie Worrall 15+0, Dan Thompson 6+2, Kyle Howarth 15+0, Joe Thompson 6+2, Max Clegg 5+2
Edinburgh Monarchs (37): Sam Masters 12+0, Lasse Fredriksen 1+0, Kye Thomson 4+0, Paco Castagna 5+1, Josh Pickering 9+1, James Sarjeant 4+0, Jacob Hook 2+1
Experienced news, business, arts, sport and travel journalist. Food critic and managing editor of a well-established food and travel website. Also a magazine editor of publications with circulations of up to 200,000 and managing director of a long-established PR/marketing company with a string of blue-chip clients in its CV. Former communications lecturer at a Scottish university and social media specialist for a string of successful and busy SMEs.
