scotchopper

Omg!! That has to be the worst Newcastle performance at the dale ever and to do it in a semi final very poor. I can honestly say the scoreline flattered Newcastle. Danny king was the only rider that turned up and gave us a couple of cracking races. Love watching Sam masters chasing down riders the lad is really special. Monarchs have worked incredibly hard this year and given the final table deserve the title but 5 extremely hard meetings remaining and there are certainly no gimme s. Confident we'll have enough to make the ko cup final so will probably give Newcastle a miss on Sunday, shame. 17 matches in a row unbeaten again.

Monarchs league cup champions. You little dancer, well worthy winners and fairly straight forward in the end. All 7 were solid if not spectacular but that is pretty decent considering it was the 2nd part of a double header. A couple of decent races and the panthers tried hard to keep in it but carrying too many. Glad to see Sam and deek up and OK after a couple of may take. Has anyone in league cup/premier trophy/any other name won every match in the competition!! Phenomenal achievement. Only Berwick and Peterborough got within 6 points of the monarchs and the bandits match was the only one that went to heat 15.

Let's be honest if there was no discount on the online price then there would not be much point buying online. Especially now you can pay by card on the gate it's not like we are going to sell out. For offering a discount monarchs get money in the bank and in the event of a rain off they essentially get an advance which is handy for cash flow. It's incredibly difficult for promotions these days and £24 does seem a bit steep but they will still make a loss. I think as an Edinburgh fan with a tough match against Newcastle and a cup final it is well worth it

Totally disagree arson the diamonds should have had respect for a national cup final, bigger than any one club. I understand your argument and have some sympathies with the diamonds not wanting to have a free week but in the build up to a cup final all promoters and the bspa should have been promoting the event. Instead we are talking about George English. At the moment the one thing that the elite league do better than the Pl Is the dates and promotion of the play off semis and final. My guess is that is because of sky sports and all the self interest of promoters and clubs is removed. An example of this is Friday where the monarchs are now running a double header to try to get promotion of the Ko cup final regardless of who gets through, I know that they normally avoid double headers at all costs.

Excellent day out today. There were 3 or 4 top drawer races with heat 3 and 9 my favourites. Monarchs top 5 is solid at the moment, only running 2 lasts: one off 15m and the other in ht15 when the meeting was won. Derek tried hard and should have got 2nd in ht2. Both reserves will have to be at their best no matter who we get in the play off final but the meeting today was never really in doubt. 3 teams beat us when we had a hard month in August, 2 are now avenged I hope Somerset get through so we can get that final score settled. Big thanks to TheScotsman for the help today, really good to meet you. Finally I hope that is not the final curtain on Peterborough panthers, set up there is by far the best in the country and the track is top notch too. Just need to get someone to manage it properly and the fans to get behind them.

Shame there is that lack of interest, considering the weather you have had it was a decent achievement to make it to the play offs. If you make it to the play off s you deserve a couple of big meetings. League match is scheduled for 18th October

If it wasn't for George I would have been there too. I had to postpone my plans and may not make it now. Posturing at its finest and one of the reasons this sport is in a mess.

To be honest I now hope it is Newcastle vs Edinburgh as I don't hold out much hope of organising getting to Peterborough for Sunday. We were so close to booking flights last week. Promotions really need to get together better on this and stop working against each other. For what it's worth I think a cup final should supersede any seniority rules. Hopefully there will be a decision today

I think it is quite poor form for Newcastle to force a fixture that has been in the calendar for a few weeks and a cup final to be rearranged. I didn't book flights in the end but we would have spent over £400 on travel, luckily we heard the rumour as well. Would have been raging.

Wasn't great, which is a shame I guess the comets fans didn't believe they could do it. Still probably about double what will be for the league match if they run it

No he makes a good point if promoters were doing what their job is called they would have arranged it so that at least one of this weekend's fixtures was Berwick vs Workington and if it was a neutral organising they would have ensured that the team most likely to qualify were in the final match. The other group is the same although it may end up being an exciting shootout between Ipswich and Somerset. What should be money spinning play off matches are now worse than a meaningless end of season challenge match, it's not even as if the winner is given bronze medals. Worked perfectly for the monarchs as they now have time to fit in the ko cup and league cup.

Any news on René or kyle? Can I also get a weather check

Howarth has been poor at armadale in both matches this season but he looked a lot worse tonight. Would be very surprised if we see him in the return match. Bach's crash looked really nasty as well, hopefully both are fit and able to ride. It does make a moickery of the play offs when teams get so badly affected. i think the monarchs would have enough even if they were all fit and i would rather see us tested against the best. Robson had a great score at coventrytonight so he could be interesting choice of guest

Main problem with this statement is play offs don't count towards averages. Neither do cup ties If you had seen him battle from 4th to 2nd in ht14 you certainly wouldn't have accused him of that. Essentially he lost to worky's 3 decent riders tonight, wells is always good at the dale and win in ht15 demonstrated that. Rene Bach looked really good tonight until his crash, I would have loved to see him try to break down deek and Max in that race. No disgrace to lose to Doolan either. So no problem there. I do agree with the point that he is going to be left with an inflated average. But it won't be as badly inflated as some are suggesting, his final average will contain 15/16 meetings in the main body of the team. His final average is going to be about 7.54 so I think he will be worth a punt for some promoters. Only an increase of 4.54, phenomenal Lightning gater which makes a massive difference.

Straw poll, 3 of us who were half way between scunny and Peterborough when the first league match was postponed are seriously thinking about heading down and booking flights tomorrow. Should we give them another chance?

I'm hoping that scunny pick up a 4 point win and get through this section after 4 matches. Fingers crossed monarchs pick up 4 points this week and we can get on with the final instead of still racing qualifiers in the middle of october

I know that no one is really taking this seriously but the best example in speedway is daugavpils from Latvia competing in the polish league. Nothing to see here you will always be welcome in Scotland x

Stormy at reserve and r/r for Jensen puts a different complexion on Friday at the dale. I still think we'll have enough and fancy us at Berwick but it is the foregone conclusion everyone on here is claiming

I'll give you the same answer I intend to use on Thursday YES

I agree it will be incredibly difficult and almost certainly won't happen but to quote someone else on this thread you can't have it both ways. If you don't have a single race night then clashes are inevitable and as I said earlier there is zero reasons why the British league should get priority over other competitions. Fans talking down riders for racing elsewhere instead of here are living in dream land. This has been coming for a while now and it needs something drastic done, one race night or no foreigners for example. Otherwise get used to this sort of thing, it isn't good enough and should not be at pl prices. If Glasgow line up against us like that look out the record book, as a visiting fan it is not what I would want to see and would think twice about going.

The problem is British speedway not the rest of the world and foreign riders. Gone are the days when Britain ruled the world and could pay riders so that they would race here first. Need to get one race day for each league and completely restructure around that. These championships no matter how diddy you think they are need to race on one day.

How did stormy get on?

Cookie - started the season on fire and is still the best rider in the league. Form dipped a tiny bit recently but wouldn't change him for anyone else Justin - extremely fast when out in front and has really bolstered the team. Sometimes finds it difficult to come from behind but solid scoring and a steal on his average Max- taking another step forward again this season and at times has really shown maturity well beyond his years. Crash in Scottish open has put him back half a yard but I fully expect him to kick on big time and take us to trophies Stevie - the main reason for our phenomenal start to the season, best 3.00 signing for monarchs ever. in the main body of the team is still scoring well. Lightning starter and likely rider of the year, not bad in this company Sam - started to see the real Sam masters recently, extremely powerful and determined rider. Even when he struggled at home early on he still won us away matches. Will be key in upcoming play offs especially at Somerset. Aaron - slow burner who has shown in fits and starts what he is capable of. A couple of injuries at the wrong time has held him back. Could make the difference Deek - a bit of an enigma, great starter at times but dropped loads of points. Should be doing much better at reserve but cannot fault his effort.

But we didn't gain an advantage. That is why it is the referees discretion, if the ref thinks a rider is intentionally trying to get a race stopped and awarded he reruns. Still not 100% sure how deek thought he would control the move but he definitely wasn't trying to get the race stopped as Stevie was ahead. Some you get some you don't it just added to the frustration of the night not coming away with a win. If they had run ht15 I am quite confident we would have won the meeting. Cannot really argue with the decision to abandon it though and as cookie says on the monarchs site it probably should have been called off after ht12.

Well Stevie worrall and lewis Kerr had definitely completed 2 laps when the race was stopped even though the incident happened on the 2nd lap. IMO Stevie was well clear and in the conditions there is no way he would have been passed. It is the refs discretion but should have been awarded in this instance.