The Edinburgh Monarchs promotion are unhappy about the team that represented Young England at Armadale last week. While the squad that came last year was virtually full strength, this years' team was rather weak. When the team was announced, World Under-21 champion Lee Richardson and British Under-21 champion Leigh Lanham were both omitted because of their involvement with the full England squad.
Then David Howe who was supposed to be captaining the side pulled out to ride for Peterborough. He was supposedly replaced by Danny Bird but a day later he was withdrawn and the over-age André was named as replacement. There is no evidence that Compton ever accepted the booking and he faxed a note to say that he wouldn't be there. In the end, rider replacement was used. This left a team of six Premier League reserves and second strings.
While the English youngsters rode out of their skins and certainly made of fight of the match, the team was hardly likely to draw a big crowd. The Edinburgh supporters must have sensed what was happening and the crowd was well down. The absence of Howe who rode in a League Match indicated that the authorities couldn't give a stuff about the Under-21 side. This was poor backing for manager Graham Reeve who wanted to field as strang a team as possible. By contrast, earlier this year Berwick had to compete away at Stoke without Scott Lamb and David Meldrum who were riding for Scotland.
This promted the Edinburgh promotion to announce that they will not be staging any more Tests against the England Under-21 side. With Glasgow having already pulled out for different reasons this could kill off the series. John Campbell was upset that the riders were being paid Elite League points money. This may have been acceptable when the programme was arranged on the assumption that the likes of Richardson, Lanham, and Howe would be riding, it was not really on for a team of comparative rookies.
Campbell stated that Edinburgh would be interested in staging a full Test Match against a country whose governing body takes Internationals seriously. Countries such as Norway, Finland, Italy or Holland have been mentioned in this context.
The future of the Scottish International side is still in the balance because of lack of depth in the squad. Nine riders have been used this year, five from Monarchs (Grieves, Brady, Little, Scott and McDonald), three from Berwick (Powell, Lamb, and Meldrum) and one from Workington (Campbell). To this can be added David McAllan and Wesley Waite who both missed out on the possibility of selection this year due to injuries. This squad of eleven should be enough to sustain the team for some time especially as only Lamb, Little and Powell are over 25.
It is probable that an Italian team containing Armando Castagnia and Stefano Alfonso would be a big draw at Armadale. The Finnish team with riders such as Vesa Ylinen, Kaj Laukannen, and Petri Kokko would also be likely to attract interest.