Speedway: Wolbert out of Knockout Cup crunch

Published on Wednesday 28 October 2009 09:07

EDINBURGH Scotwaste Monarchs' in-form German ace Kevin Wolbert has been ruled out of tonight's Knockout Cup Final second leg clash against King's Lynn Stars at the Norfolk Arena.

Wolbert broke his finger in Monday's promotion/relegation tie at Belle Vue Aces and also looks set to miss the return leg at Armadale on Friday.

Monarchs will use rider replacement to cover Wolbert's absence and have approached Newport's Chris Kerr to guest for Michal Rajkowski.

Monarchs chairman Alex Harkess explained: "The rules don't allow us to use a guest for Kevin because he is on an assessed average so the guest has got to be for Michal. Chris is an obvious choice because he is going quite well at the moment and he rode at Wolverhampton on Monday, but there is not an awful lot of choice because of the average Michal has got."

And Harkess admits losing Wolbert is a major blow. "Kevin was going to be our ace card tonight but there is nothing we can do about it, but our task has now become a lot harder."

King's Lynn will make speedway history if they overcome Monarchs and claim the Cup.

Success would give the Stars their second trophy treble in four years and they would become the first team in the lower division to achieve such a feat. And if the Stars overturn the deficit of seven points they incurred in the first leg at Armadale on Friday, they would win the Knockout Cup for the fourth time in five seasons.

However, Monarchs are far from despondent after their failure to carve out a bigger first-leg advantage and skipper Matthew Wethers insisted: "Conditions last week, because of the rain, made the track surface very slippy and tricky, but I don't think it affected our performance.

"We got stuck in and everybody tried their best, King's Lynn are a very good side and they certainly gated better than we did. We certainly have nothing to fear from King's Lynn, we showed in the play-off second leg down there that we were very unlucky not to win the match and we know how to ride their circuit. We just need to make sure everyone is on top of their game, we cannot carry passengers. The tie is still very much alive, in my opinion."

Stars team manager Rob Lyon was clearly delighted that his side ran Monarchs so close and believes the advantage has now swung in the Stars' favour. He said: "We had something to prove last Friday at Armadale, mostly to ourselves, after Monarchs defeated us by 20 points in the play-offs the previous week.

"We simply couldn't afford to lose by such a margin in the cup.

"And we didn't, and that was testimony to the determination our boys showed in abundance."

Strength in depth has been a key feature of King's Lynn's domination this season and this was graphically illustrated by Jan Graversen's magnificent 14-point score in the first match.

"Jan was absolutely amazing," said Lyon. "It was easily his finest performance of the season.

"His partner Linus Eklof was the star in our Premier Trophy matches with Edinburgh but was disappointing on Friday, but Jan stepped up to the mark and was instrumental in enabling us to keep the scores so tight."

Aaron Summers, who bombed in Monday's promotion race-off at Belle Vue, desperately needs to find some inspiration at reserve to give Monarchs a realistic chance of a result.

Even accounting for two disqualifications in the first leg, the result of some bad refereeing decisions by Jim McGregor, Summers was poor and the Aussie needs to show more tenacity.

Meanwhile, with rain forcing Monarchs to host the deciding leg of their promotion race-off with Belle Vue this Friday, the Scottish Open Championship will be restaged on 19 March as the curtain-raiser to Monarchs' 2010 season.