Stellar Monarchs’ team manager John Campbell went into the club’s Cab Direct Championship meeting at Poole Pirates minus No 1 Craig Cook and they were beaten 59-31.
Campbell admitted to Pirates TV: “We’ve had a tough season. You can’t come to probably the best team in the league when you’ve got your No 1 missing and no suitable guest, without it being a very difficult match. We did get one or two decisions going against us.”
Monarchs were forced to use rider replacement for Craig Cook and that yielded one point. Josh Pickering (pictured) top scored with 11 points.
Monarchs started badly and were 14-4 behind after three heats, but the first boost came from Pickering’s win from the back in heat 4 against Steve Worrall.
Kye Thomson also beat Worrall in winning heat 7, flying round him on the opening bends. In between these two race wins, Josh suffered an awful dec ision in heat 6 when Kyle Newman came down on the opening bends and came off trying to squeeze through on the outside. An obvious all-4 decision seemed inevitable, and Poole manager Middleditch agreed, but the ref threw Josh out of the heat.
Paco Castagna came down in heat 8 when there seemed a chance he was going ahead, but it was Josh up next to win heat 9 from the Cook brothers.
Poole then took two 5-1s to put the match well beyond doubt, but the heat of the night was probably heat 13. Pickering made a terrible start but flew after the Poole boys, with passing and re-passing between Josh and Richard Lawson before Josh just got squeezed out.
Bastain Borke got some reward for his efforts with a second place in heat 14 and we finished the match with an advantage as Josh Pickering raced a long way clear in the last heat. Kye Thomson also made it into double figures with third place in our only race advantage.
Poole Pirates (59): Richard Lawson 10+2, Kyle Newman 9+1, Ben Cook 8+0, Zach Cook 7+2, Steve Worrall 12+0, Anders Rowe 9+2, Joe Thompson 4+2
Edinburgh Monarchs (31): Craig Cook 0+0, Paco Castagna 5+0, Kye Thomson 9+1, Bastian Borke 2+0, Josh Pickering 11+1, Dayle Wood 1+0, Max Clegg 3+0
Meanwhile, Connor Coles faces a spell on the sidelines after breaking his collar bone in two places riding for Berwick Bandits against Glasgow Tigers on Saturday. He has been released from hospital.
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