Andy Downes

My first ever Speedway match was Crayford v Young Sweden in April 1980. The Young Swedes consisted of the experienced Tommy Nilsson who if memory serves me went through the card and probably the second half. Apart from him, the team was pretty poor. The only back up riders who I remember were Borje Ring who did a season at Eastbourne in 1982 and Ake Fredell (?) who reappeared at Crayford in either 1982 or 1983 with a touring side. Forward a couple of seasons to 1982 Eastbourne and the aforementioned Ring was joined by Lars Hammerberg and Lillibror Johansson, all three of them contested the two reserve berths and even with the alarming shortage of riders in 1983, Eastie only brought back Johansson for a short spell. Don't think any of them ever got above a 5.00 average. I think Sweden went through one of those dips of not having any young world class riders (bit like the UK has gone through) Between the death of Tommy Jansson and the rise of Per Jonsson/Jimmy Nilsen there was only Jan Andersson, a rider who I never really rated but whose points output and longevity at the top end of the averages would suggest otherwise Sadly a young Swede provided me with an unwanted first as I was at Kings Lynn the night Leif Wahlmann was killed

Gresham, I live in Yate and as a non driver, I can assure you it is damn near impossible to get to this proposed track by public transport - truth of the matter is I'd never heard of the place until I read this thread Mind you, my neighbour is an ex-Eastville track grader so if I can get him interested again, problem solved.

either Hackney 1988 or Newcastle 1982 in the NL for me - that would be a great hypothetical match ... no way that could happen today though as both teams had 7 Brits as regular starters ....

The Hackney team of 1991 was pretty uninspiring compared to the other teams following the 1984 move from Crayford but I don't think they could touch Workington 1980 I always thought the worst BL side I ever saw was Eastbourne 1983 - they sold their 1982 number one (Gordon Kennett) and then the numbers 2 and 3 (Kelly Moran and Ron Preston) remained at home and were basically not replaced; but I was amazed to find they actually finished above Swindon that year - they must have been awful .....

BBC4 has been showing a series of documentaries called Britain on Film recently, the basic premises is the programme is 30 minutes of newsreel footage from the 1960's showing how Britain/The British went about their working life/leisure/travel etc I have just watched the edition on leisure (available on catch up if anyone's interested) they showed about 2 seconds of speedway so nothing to get excited about there sadly but there was a fairly long feature on the new sport of Stock car Racing. they showed quite a bit of footage from a meeting at Braefield. They were racing on an oval track but it was concrete rather than shale My question is to any real old ';uns out there is; was this the old Speedway Track concreted over or was there a separate track for bikes there

Whilst not disputing or dismissing your answer Compost, your reply raises the question about noise - I would have thought Stocks make more noise than Speedway bikes - I realise bikes rev higher thus creating the illusion of more noise but there are far more stocks on the track at ant time and the races are longer thus creating more noise over a sustained period; the continued programme of stocks would indicate that noise is not the primary problem here.

Thanks for those replies - from your comments I think I can assume the stock car film was from the early 60's prior to the re-construction of the speedway track

If it was 1983, it was probably R/R for Bobby Beaton - certainly he always seemed to be out when Newcastle came to Crayford

First match - Crayford v Nottingham Outlaws. Persuaded by my younger brother to give him a lift on my bike I remember Crayford won by about 8 points and their No. 1 rider (later found out it was Mike Sampson) thrashed all the home ones I did about every other meeting until the 4's that year which Crayford won - I got hooked that day and foolishly thought Crayford were a major force in the second flight - little did I realise that day was just about the highlight of the (original) Kestrels existance

Same bloke - According to Wiki, he was a jockey too!

Agree 100% with your best choices Terry but as the Harding/Weatherley crash was before my time my worst 3 1) Paul Muchene killed at Hackney 2) Leif Wahlmann killed during the Euro Under 21 Final at Kings Lynn 3) Crayford 1983/Hackney 1991 closures

1) Bristol - maybe they could build it near Cribbs Causeway - difficult to complain about the noise with the shopping mall and motorway nearby 2) Newport 3) Oxford 4) Reading 5) Crayford - purely sentimental reasons but sadly it'll be a cold day in hell before that would be remotely possible

I seem to remember several demonstration races at Hackney in the late 1980's but the racing was poor compared to the local grasstrack scene - I think the track was too small and probably too narrow for any decent racing. I believe there was some talk of a sidecar league around that time but that could be my memory playing tricks as I was falling out of love with the sport at that time

It will never work - in didn't when I supported Crayford in the 70's/80's and it wouldn't work now. The odd (let's face it) freak result every few years has clouded memories and the regular thumping's have been forgotten - the gap was too big then and it still is today

I Knew Michael Warren died of cancer but I didn't know Dave Hamnett had died - assume was it an illness as I don't recall him losing his life in a track crash

Couldn't agree more about 1991 - it didn't help that we had a new promoter who seemed patently out of his depth and having the worst team since the Kestrels moved from Crayford. I couldn't get the enthusiasm to support Arena/Lakeside, and have never gone on a regular basis since