Junior footy kicks off under lights

The green team from Leongatha took the win in the Warragul Cycling Clubs team’s race on Saturday on the Cloverlea circuit.

The teams race format is a combination of scratch race and handicap with the first 20 finishers accumulating points for their team. Each team had two riders in the limit group who started 12 minutes before the fast men. Frank Bensted from the orange team and Hayden Johnstone from the Blue team drove the limit bunch along at a solid pace.

Twenty riders, five from each team left seven minutes later.

The blue team’s Glenn Marriott and Orange’s Paul Yeatman immediately tried to animate the race. Others tried to bridge and pulses were immediately racing. Danny Dilger, in his first race for a few years, showed he’d lost none of his strength or combative spirit. He had frequent powerful but short lived jaunts off the front of the peloton.

The red team seemed to have a plan that involved chasing everything down and when they were not doing that they set a solid tempo on the front. Jayman Prestidge and Col Brown seemed intent on destroying any chance they had of finishing with the final bunch when they towed the field up to the base of Mt Worth on lap three. Rob Monk sensed they may be in trouble so he attacked just as the scratch riders who started five minutes after his group caught them.

The race now went up a gear. For the remaining lap and a half it was just repeated attacks. Cy Monk, the red team captain, seemed keen to let breaks go and then jump across to them. Stu Smith, the other National level rider in the field also lit up