Edinburgh Monarchs Alex Harkess (left) with fellow-director and ex-rider Andrew Tully in the pits at Armadale. Picture by Nigel Duncan Media

Edinburgh Monarchs spokesman Graham Muncie said the team will re-group after suffering their first defeat of the season.

The Armadale-based club entertain Workington Comets in the SGB Championship on Friday after skidding to a 57-34 defeat at arch rivals Glasgow Tigers.

Muncie said Monarchs were routinely last from the gate and could make very little impact on a fired-up and on-form Tigers outfit.

He said the match had started promisingly with the score all square at 12-12 after fpur races and Glasgow then lost the services of Nike Lunna.

The Finnish rider suffered a high speed crash in Heat Three which saw the youngster taken to hospital for x-rays.

Tigers then hammered in three consecutive 5-1 advantages and Muncie said: “Heat 5 was a particular sore one for the Monarchs as a comfortable looking shared heat turned to disaster when both Sam Masters and Josh Pickering came down, Masters hitting the fence heavily and on another night he may have pulled out of the remainder of the meeting.

“A share of the spoils then heat advantage due to a tactical double points ride stemmed the tide but this was temporary as Tigers turned the screw again over the final heats with ex-Monarch Dan Bewley the star of the show racing to his first maximum at Championship level.”

Monarch’s co-promoter Alex Harkess said: ‘We had a reasonable start but the wheels came off with the crash with Josh and Sam.

“We were not competitive out of the starts and we only had Mark (Riss) who seemed capable of winning a race.

“On the night we just weren’t competitive despite the boys putting their heart into it we could not get going at all.’

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