Monarchs end year on sour note
Defeat brings eventful season to an end
The Edinburgh Parsons Peebles Monarchs wrapped up their season with a disappointing 54- 38 loss away to Peterborough Panthers on Friday night.
The clash was a re-staging of a previously postponed fixture scheduled for October 1 and came after the fate of both teams had already been sealed.
The Monarchs were dumped out of the play-offs at the semi-final stage by Ipswich Witches while Peterborough had just missed out on a top-four slot.
Despite that, there were still fixtures to be fulfilled and both teams wanted to end the 2017 season on a high.
Unfortunately for the Armadalebased Monarchs, it wasn’t to be their night as they were handily beaten by the Panthers.
Promoter John Campbell admitted his side didn’t deserve to take anything from the game, saying: “Peterborough had prepared the track with plenty of dirt which normally means exciting racing with riders using the outside line but the only heat in which any of our riders had a fine ride was heat 13 by Erik Riss.
“Other than that, nothing happened. It was all from the gate. Sam Masters wasn’t at his best and Mark Riss started well but after he crashed in heat seven he wasn’t the same rider. We just weren’t good enough.”
The visitors went into the clash confident of returning with at least a point, having done so in their previous trip to the Panthers without the Riss brothers.
A horrible start made that seem unlikely after just the second heat as a pair of 5-1 wins for the hosts gave them an eight point lead.
Masters and Mark Riss did hit back immediately with a 5-1 for the Monarchs but they were unable to build on that and trailed for the remainder of the clash.
The contributing factor was the reliance on heat leaders, who did most of the scoring with little backup. Masters clinched heats three and 12 while Erik Riss won heat 13 and American ace Ricky Wells took the flag in heat five.
However, they were outscored 14- 4 at reserve with rider replacement for Josh Pickering failing to pick up a single point.
Wells made it through to the semi-finals of the Championship Riders’ event the following day but failed to progress while Masters had a day to forget as he was unable to continue despite winning his first heat.
Berwick’s Nick Morris went on to lift the title and bring the curtain down on another eventful season.