chunky

In 1965, West Ham also won the KO Cup, and the London Cup

Pete Wigley used to do that too!

Oh, trust me, Freddie Williams really is the prime example! And people today complain about having multiple events in Poland...

It doesn't fit in with the topic of this thread, Bob...

Oops! You know why I didn't include it? I didn't see that Martin Ashby won it in 1974!

Moreso than most sports, speedway traditionally has a problem with "home Advantage", but how big an issue is it? Let's look at some home-track winners from the BL era (1965 to 1990), and there are two reasons for that. Firstly, many tracks got into the habit of running regular (and well-established) individual meetings, and secondly, there was a tendency to get as many top riders as they could. I've chosen what I consider to be the strongest established events at most BL tracks. Some of you may wonder why I chose the Internationale over The Laurels, but I always felt that The Laurels leant toward a "regional field", or riders that we enjoyed seeing. I know there were several meetings like that around the country. So, here goes... Belle Vue - BLRC: Ivan Mauger (1971), Peter Collins (1974, 1975), Chris Morton (1984), Shawn Moran (1989) Coventry - Brandonapolis: Nigel Boocock (1966, 1968, 1971), Mitch Shirra (1980), Tommy Knudsen (1982, 1984) Cradley - Golden Hammer: Bobby Schwartz (1979), Lance King (1983), Alan Grahame (1984), Erik Gundersen (1986, 1987), Jan O. Pedersen (1989), Simon Cross (1990) Exeter - Westernapolis: Ivan Mauger (1973, 1975), Zdenek Kudrna (1979) Hackney - Champions Chase: Bengt Jansson (1973), Barry Thomas (1979) Halifax - Dews Trophy: Eric Boocock (1970, 1973), Graham Plant (1976), Ian Cartwright (1979), Kenny Carter (1980, 1981) Ipswich - Golden Sovereign: John Louis (1975), Billy Sanders (1976, 1978, 1979) King's Lynn - Pride of the East: Terry Betts (1968), Howard Cole (1969), Dave Jessup (1979, 1980), Michael Lee (1981) Poole - Blue Riband: Malcolm Simmons (1975, 1976, 1977, 1978) Reading - Manpower Trophy: Anders Michanek (1973), Joh Davis (1978) Sheffield - Yorkshire Bank Trophy: Bob Valentine (1973), Doug Wyer (1979) Swindon - Silver Plume: Martin Ashby (1974) Wimbledon - Internationale: Trevor Hedge (1969), Edward Jancarz (1977) Wolverhampton - Champion of Champions: Ole Olsen (1970, 1972, 1974) Sad note is the fact that, out of all these tracks, only Belle Vue, Ipswich, King's Lynn, Poole, and Sheffield still exist...

Les, Dick, and Jim Tolley were brothers. According to a comment from Nigel on the Brummies' Facebook page, Dick and Stan (not sure where Stan fits into this!) were "distant relations".

They are all still with us, but looking at the averages, Norman was actually the best of them...

That's ridiculous! Everyone knows that Hoskins built the old Wembley...

Clearly, whoever created/updated Dick's bio was wrong. He most definitely rode in the 1956 World Final. I know that people often question the accuracy of Wikipedia, but this is the first glaring mistake (related to speedway) I've found. Another great link for checking World Championship history is http://www.speedway.org/history/. Plus, I'm currently reworking the World Final file for Speedway Researcher (there were a ton of mistakes on the original file).

One would hope...

So did Bluey Wilkinson...

Perhaps Parker was like, "I Need You", so "We Can Work it Out", but Mauger was, "Hello, Goodbye", followed by "I'll Be On My Way"...

Money can be a great healer, though...

Should be safe - like your Lions... Blackburn could go down; four matches left, including Coventry, Leeds, and Leicester.