David McAllan makes his comeback for Edinburgh Monarchs in the Scottish Cup at Ashfield on Sunday. He was given permission to return at reserve for the match against Glasgow having been kept out of the team by injuries and by red tape.
He has been sidelined for a while after losing his place due to injury. David's knee injury sustained at Swindon kept him out of the side for over two months. Although it was originally feared that he would be out for the season, he made what proved to be premature comeback against Sheffield in the Cup semi-final at Armadale. This return lasted only two matches. David did quite well against Sheffield but suffered three falls over the next weekend riding for Linlithgow against St. Austell and for Monarchs at Ashfield. David was replaced by Brian Turner for the second leg of the Cup Final at Sheffield.
Brian Turner fell in his last ride at Sheffield on his debut but recovered to make his home debut against Arena Essex in the Premier League. Ironically Brian Turner was partnered at reserve by McAllan who substituted for Blair Scott, another injury victim.
Brian Turner was injured again at Newcastle three days later aggrevating his knee injury suffered at Sheffield and also picking up a bad wrist strain. This effectively ended his season apart from an abortive attempted comeback in the Cup Final first leg.
The problem for Monarchs is that the rules prevented Monarchs from simply bringing back McAllan. This was because the deadline for changing a team member was the end of August. Brian Turner, who was injured week a too late, can only be replaced with an approved Conference League rider. Although McAllan qualifies on this count, his average is marginally too high for him to replace Brian Turner although he was able to replace Blair Scott. Monarchs chairman Alex Harkess, while welcoming the news that McAllan had recieved approval for the Scottish Cup, blasted the authorities for preventing his return for Monarchs' other two cup finals.
"If you have a rider injured you are allowed to replace him with a rider of a lower average and you can bring back the injured rider. We changed David on that principle. But then the British Speedway Promoters Association brought in a directive stating that you couldn't change your one to seven after August 31st."
"That stopped us bringing in David after Brian Turner got injured. It's crazy, if Brian had been injured on August 29th we could have brought David back into our team."
Monarchs now plan to raise this issue at the BSPA Conference this winter. The rule was introduced to stop riders from teams who had completed their season early from moving to strengthen other teams in the run-in to major competitions. It was surely never intended to prevent an injured rider returning to his team. The same rule would presumably rule out a return by Stewart McDonald should he recover from his injury.
The absence of McAllan was undoubtedly a major factor in Monarchs' loss of the Premier National Trophy to Newport by a slender six point margin. The replacements at number six scored only two points from seven rides over two legs. Stuart Coleman failed to score from four rides at Armadale. Gary Phelps did much better and scored two paid three from three rides at Newport.
Gary Phelps will fill the number 6 berth for Monarchs remaining away matches south of the border including the Young Shield first leg at Exeter and the Cup Final second leg at Arena Essex.