Another week into the season and things are going well. A win at Glasgow means the Monarchs win the Northern group of the Premier Trophy and now meet Scunthorpe or Rye House in the semi-final.
Due to Friday 15th being rained off we had no digging or fence washing on Wednesday so instead we made a start on repainting all the boards on the third and fourth bends. I also continued to tackle the soggy pits, this time the home pits were flooded Ryan's pit bay due to heavy rain from the East blowing in . I lifted the rubber matting and built up the base with old shale. As this has seemed to work quite well in the away pits we shall see what happens.
The swallows seem to have been replaced by a large gang of house martins who may be unique in that the mud which they collect for their nests is mainly composed of shale.
Friday's meeting was against the Scunthorpe Scorpions who were well served by David Howe and former Monarch Magnus Karlsson who was a class apart may have had the full 18 but for a heavy looking fall in heat 15 although Andrew Tully was leading him at the time. Carl Wilkinson also had a good race win although Ryan had a bit off an "off" night being dumped in the fence in his first race and ending up throwing his broken front mudguard at the referees box after being disexcludequalifiied.
PS What is happening at Elite League tracks - Mondays match at Coventry was again marred by a very dodgy track. You have to feel some sympathy for Ipswich losing both reserves through no fault of their own. Perhaps a number eight rider could be used in circumstances such as this, as it would seem a lot fairer. Great credit to Kozza Smith for his brave solo run - was that a three point maximum?
There is no doubt that there have been some very dodgy tracks recently. Not sure why. Perhaps in the rush to sign the big hitters not enough money has been spent on track equipment, although I did hear Wayne Swales say that Peterborough had invested heavily in track equipment. Maybe there's also more of an attempt to secure a large home advantage - very few travelling fans so a need to keep up home crowds by providing home wins. I don't know.
