Speedway: Monarchs back misfiring rider

Edinburgh Monarchs are standing by their misfiring reserve ace Charles Wright despite the Englishman’s failure to score for his second visit in succession at his former club Workington Comets at the weekend.

Monarchs lost their league match at Derwent Park 58-34, and although Wright was returning from recent injury, the 24-year-old rider had been expected to contribute something from the reserve berth.

His zero score has fuelled speculation that his team place could be at risk. Wright admitted today that he has lost confidence but refused to use that as an excuse for his poor performance. “It’s just about getting back into things after the recent knocks I’ve had, but I’ll be all right. I just struggled and it’s down to me, and I don’t blame anything else.

“After my two recent crashes I have lost a lot of confidence but I don’t want to go around telling everybody that because it’s bad for the team. But it is hard to come back from injury sometimes.”

Wright was sidelined for a week after colliding with team-mate Derek Sneddon in a spectacular pile-up at Glasgow Tigers but fully believed he would pick up some reward with his first match back being at Workington, a track he rode at for four seasons. And asked if he understood fans’ frustration over his failure to get to grips with his old circuit, Wright replied: “I do know the track well but before Saturday I had not ridden a bike for seven days and, with our home fixture rained off on Friday, I didn’t get the chance to put some competitive track time in which was frustrating. But Workington is a hard place to go to, you may know the track, but so do the home riders and you can’t be expected to get good scores all the time. Workington are probably the best team in the league and I definitely needed a home match before going there.

“I don’t know if I’m in the firing line, I haven’t really thought about losing my team place because my scores have been good, especially at the start of the season, it’s not that I’m thinking about crashing before I go out for races, if I was guilty of that I’d never score.

“I just hope the Edinburgh management understand that coming back from injury, I’m trying to feel my way back into things. Hopefully the bad luck that I’ve had is now over and I want to put it behind me now.”

Monarchs director Mike Hunter said the club are not seeking a replacement for Wright. “There is nothing brewing but we’d like to see Charles doing a good deal better than he did on Saturday, we are not looking for anyone else at the moment, but we’d like Charles to do better.”