Dan Gilkes scored a third consecutive maximum and Jacob Clouting a career best paid 11, but it wasn’t enough to prevent a third defeat in the past four home matches for the Kent Iwade Garage Royals on Tuesday (26/10) evening against Belle Vue Colts who as a result leap-frog over the Royals into third place in the National League.
Again though there was plenty of bad luck to rue with crucial engine failures for Jake Mulford & skipper Ryan Kinsley costing the hosts points as they eventually went down by another agonisingly close losing margin of 44 points to 46.
One could tell this encounter against the side from Manchester was going to be a very close run affair when after the first four heats the sides were locked together after a quartet of consecutive drawn heats at 12-12. But it was the Royals who were to blink first, with an indication of just how uncomfortable Kinsley’s injured ribs from last week’s heat 15 pile up was making him in the racing environment, when he couldn’t catch the Belle Vue pairing of Harry McGurk and former Kent Kings’ man Connor Coles and suddenly the side from the north-west were four points ahead. I doubt nevertheless that many in the stadium at this early juncture would’ve predicted that this was a lead the Colts were never to surrender but that was indeed to be the case.
Surrendering though was not the word for the ever plucky Vinnie Foord in heat 6 when in the race of the night he engaged in a brilliant racing combat with the hugely improved Sam Woolley, catching the Belle Vue youngster on the line after a four lap battle royale between the two youngsters.
That narrowed the gap to two but huge calamity struck in the very next race with Mulford leading comfortably when he blew an engine and the visitors were gifted a 5-1.
Despite Gilkes being in imperious form on the way to a second consecutive 15 points full maximum and Clouting following up his heat two win with solid scoring throughout the meeting, this was going to be tough deficit to pull back and when Kinsley who’d battled through the pain barrier to beat the visitors’ number one Jack Smith in heat nine, suffered his own mechanical misfortune when his bike failed to leave the start in heat 11 it was a second successive 1-5 in favour of the visitors (after ### McGurk and Coles had held Mulford at bay in the preceding heat) – and now far from being close, the gap was 12 and the Royals were staring down the barrel of a drubbing.
That wasn’t to be as finally two 5-1s in the final three heats (both courtesy of the terrific teen duo of Gilkes and Mulford, though they were perilously close to an accidental coming together in heat 13) and a 4-2 in the penultimate race thanks to an excellent effort again from Clouting who was a revelation, brought the losing margin down to a more respectable but still ultimately disappointing two points.
At the end of the day, the Royals can still finish third in this division when they travel to Leicester on Sunday (31/1) for the rearranged ‘home’ match that has to be fitted in on neutral territory. They are taking on their rivals for that position, the Scottish side Armadale Devils. But of the 13 points so far accumulated, all but three have been won the road and it’s been this trio of late season home defeats which have cost John Sampford’s charges the title. It may indeed be best that the final hurdle is a home match in name only.
