BL65

Looking further at this, the Yarmouth programme notes by Ernie Wedon, the Yarmouth manager, on 13th June include the following: "Cradley owe the winning of the Kemsley (Southern) Shield to Alan Hunt, and while we were all pleased to see the Cradley 'Flyer' in action, we should have preferred to have seen him start his rides as a full team member and not as a reserve. To bring their 'Star' in as reserve was against the rules, as he had scored more than 50 per cent. of possible points in his last six matches. A report has been sent to the Control Board and there may be repercussions." The result stood, however.

The meeting referred to was on 6th June, not May. In the Cradley Heath programme on 29th May there were comments on Hunt's 'resignation' with a pending move to ride in the first division. On 5th June he returned to the side, replacing Harry Bastable at number 4 in the programme, with Harry dropping to reserve to replace Jim Pain. In the Yarmouth programme for the meeting on 6th June it was stated 'as Alan Hunt, who will be riding in Div 1 soon, is unlikely to ride.....' However, he did ride, replacing programmed reserve Geoff Godwin as first reserve. In the Cradley Heath programme for the meeting on 12th June it was explained that Les Marshall, the Birmingham promoter, was welcomed back to the promotion and that supporters should not worry that this was part of a move to strengthen the Brummies by taking away Cradley riders. Indeed, it was explained that Marshall was the man responsible for the return to the side of Alan Hunt the previous week. Hunt of course then moved to Birmingham for the 1951 season. The move that never happened in 1950 was the reported 'transfer' of Alan Hunt to Harringay for £2,500 before Les Marshall's intervention and the promise of a future berth at Birmingham. In the two meetings referred to when Hunt came back in to the team he directly replaced programmed riders, correctly going in to the team and Bastable dropping down to reserve in the first, but inexplicably being allowed to ride in the reserve position at Yarmouth, no reason being published that I have seen.

There has never been consistency or logic in the way that exclusions are treated in official records. For example, when exclusion for tape breaking was reintroduced in 1968 the exclusion did not count as a ride and was not reflected in the rider's average. This explains some discrepancies between official statistics from that time compared with some retrospective compilations where the statistician does include these exclusions.

One way of looking at the matter could be this. If a rider is programmed to take part in the meeting and is present at the track, with the intention to participate, to the extent that his machine is prepared ready to race and the rider is attired and ready to race but is then prevented from doing so, whether it be due to two minutes exclusions or a mishap on the way to the start (as in Dave's scenario), resulting in the rider being replaced by a reserve, then it counts as one meeting, no rides, no points. The reason for the reserve substitution(s) relates to events in the course of running the meeting and directly relate to the participation in events by the unfortunate rider.

I remember when the rule book was simpler and unambiguous. The 1931 rules could be summarised in a handful of pages of a pocket book. In the 1950s the rule book was still reasonably straightforward, but has got progressively more complicated. The more rules there are the more they can be manipulated.

On 29th May 1965 George Major fell at the first bend of heat 3 in his first race in the match between Cradley Heath and Wolverhampton. He was injured and could not take his place in the re-run, being replaced by the reserve, John Debbage. Major could take no further part but the official records show that he participated in the meeting, taking 0 rides and scoring 0 points. He rode in 21 other league meetings, but the records show a total of 22 for the season. On 28th June 1970 both Cradley Heath reserves were injured in a heat 2 pile up and were unable to take any further part in the meeting against Newport. Mike Gardner was excluded and so had one ride for 0 points. Chris Bass did not take his place in the re-run but the records show that he participated in the meeting, scoring 0 points from 0 rides. Incidentally, Cradley Heath were allowed to replace Bass with Ken Wakefield in the re-run and to take his other rides, with the records thereby showing them as using 8 riders in the match. In both these instances the injured riders had started a race, albeit the results did not count as they were re-run, Nevertheless, their participation in events formed part of the meeting record. This is clearly different to the circumstances where a rider does not even start a race and it could be argued that the rider concerned did not make an appearance in the meeting. However, perhaps the answer hinges on when the meeting starts and what the team line-ups are at that point. Does the meeting officially start as soon as the tapes rise for the first heat? If so, the riders in the declared teams all make an 'appearance' presumably. Hypothetically, if a rider was excluded under the two minutes rule having failed to make it out of the pits in each of his programmed rides and was then replaced by reserves he would presumably have participated in the meeting, with his outcomes recorded in the official results, but scoring 0 points from 0 rides. Maybe it is best explained by making a distinction between taking part in the meeting and taking part in races in the meeting.

It was on 2nd July 1966 that Olle Nygren was defeated in the Silver Sash following the Wimbledon-Exeter match. However, it was neither Squibb or Gooddy, but Tommy Sweetman who won the Sash. Gooddy was Exeter top scorer, having scored one point more than Sweetman in his 4 scheduled rides as well as when taking into the tactical substitute rides which both had, but it was Tommy who took part and won the race.

I believe that the rider was W.H.Galloway.

The touring party to Montevideo, Uruguay, sailed from England on 1st November 1931. It comprised Belle Vue riders Clem Cort, Frank Varey, Bob Harrison, Eric and Oliver Langton, along with Joe Gooding of Nottingham. The fatal accident occurred on Wednesday, 20th January 1932. The other two riders involved were Bob Harrison, who suffered minor injuries, and Oliver Langton, who was unhurt. It was reported in the press that Harrison was arrested in connection with the death of Clem Cort following the crash. Harrison spent three days in prison while his colleagues sought an interpreter to assist him. It later transpired that Cort was the driver and Harrison and Langton pillion passengers. To avoid a collision Cort turned the machine on its side and he suffered fatal head injuries. Harrison was taken to prison because, not understanding the language, he had unwittingly agreed that he was the driver of the machine when questioned.

Alan Grahame 1973 to 1998 (26 seasons), plus second half races at Birmingham in 1972.

The details shown on the Researcher file need checking as Stenner's 1951 annual shows the Long Eaton track record as 72.6 by Eric Minall on 31st August 1950.

My files suggest that it was 84.4, set by Fred Strecker on 2nd November 1929. That was the last meeting of the season. A meeting was staged at the track on 10th June 1930 between Nottingham and Leicester Stadium, with the fastest time recorded at that meeting being 87.6. I have no record of any further official meetings at Long Eaton until 1950.

The Walthamstow programme for the meeting on 23rd October 1950 confirmed that this was the final of the competition run throughout the season, where at every Division 3 league meeting the top four points scorers (including bonus points) from each team contested the Championship Rounds in the second half of the programme. There was a crowd of more than 23,000 at the final.

Eric Boothroyd rode for Halifax and promoted at Middlesbrough in 1966. Cyril Crane was co-promoter at King's Lynn in 1966 and rode in several meetings for the Stars that year. Oxford co-promoter Danny Dunton also made one appearance for the Cheetahs in 1965. Maurice McDermott rode for Exeter and Oxford in 1965 and was promoter at Rayleigh that year. Tommy Sweetman appeared for Wolverhampton and co-promoted at Rye House in 1965.

Wilf also appeared for Wombwell when they were a rider short in the final meeting at Cradley Heath in 1948.

Looking back at my Liverpool scrapbook from 1949 I am reminded of some of the escapades of the Chads' South Africans, Fred Wills and Doug Serrurier, who along with Harry Welch became tagged as the Three Musketeers, noted for their escapades in their 'off-white' van. On one occasion it was used as emergency sleeping accommodation on the East Lancs Road, another time it broke down and caused chaos on Tamworth Road, with the worst event being an overturned trailer en-route to Exeter, which resulted in three wrecked bikes. Wills and Serrurier had a great following at Stanley Stadium.

Belle Vue did indeed make a trip to the Soviet Union at the beginning of October 1967. In pouring rain they lost a team match 47-61 to Leningrad, with Ove Fundin top scoring with 13 points. Tommy Roper scored 12 and Sandor Levai 8, with guests from Swindon Mike Broadbank and Bob Kilby contributing 7 and 5 respectively. Cyril Maidment was unable to travel due to a family bereavement. An individual meeting was also staged, in which Fundin finished third. Reflecting the expeditionary nature of the trip, the Aces riders took their own handlebars and rode JAWA-ESO machines provided by their hosts. The luxury of transporting the handlebars cost £11 for excess baggage,

The Rayleigh bit was easy, I just looked in the programmes from that season.

There was a formatting oversight on the spreadsheet from which the Yarmouth 1948 file is produced. Some cells were not set up to show the time to one decimal place and this was recently corrected (in August), with the revised file due to be published on the Researcher site very soon. The actual time set by Paddy Mills was 73.2 and this stood for the rest of the season.

The Rayleigh track record was 76.2, set by Wally Green of Hastings on 21st August 1948. I believe that Bill Kitchen held the pre-war track record of 74.4 seconds on the old Oxford track, which was described in some press reports as a sand surface. A new track was constructed for the 1949 season.

The race you refer to was in the second half of the London Cup Final 1st Leg between Wimbledon and Wembley on 26th August 1946. 5 riders were programmed but only 4 came to the tapes, with Jimmy Coy winning from Basil Harris, Collins and Dennis Gray. Coy went on to ride in a handful of meetings for the Dons in 1947, but spent the season with 3rd Division champions Eastbourne, where he averaged well over 7 points per match. Harris made his Wimbledon debut in 1946, also rode in a few meetings the following year, but as with Coy he turned out for Eastbourne in 1947, averaging over 9.00. Dennis Gray made a few appearances for Wimbledon between 1946 to 1948, before hitting the high spots at Oxford in 1949, returning to the Dons in 1950, where he was a solid performer before moving on to Leicester then Rayleigh in the mid 1950s. Vic Collins was also programmed to ride in the Novices Scratch Race in the second half of the National League meeting against Odsal the following week. The race was won by Gray, from Coy and Robinson. Harris was the other participant in the 5-rider race. Assuming that the Vic Collins referred to in the Wimbledon programmes was the same Vic Collins that returned to Southampton in 1947, maybe his appearances were part of the process of blowing away the cobwebs, given that his last full season for Southampton was in 1937, appearing only a handful of times in 1938. Also, taking into account the level of results achieved by Harris, Coy and Gray in 1947 it seems that the tag of novices was possibly somewhat inaccurate at this stage. Harris, Coy and Robinson had, in fact, been riding in Wimbledon second half races since the middle of May. There were three categories of second half races at Wimbledon, those for 'senior' riders, with usually a race each for 'junior' or reserve standard riders and 'novice' riders (which seemed to include anyone without a team place as a reserve), although sometimes the novice race winner progressed to the junior race or the junior race winner moved to the reserve race.

An interesting point about Harry Edwards is that he started with Wolves and ended with Wolves. His first team, in 1949, was Walthamstow Wolves and he ended his career at Wolverhampton Wolves in 1964. The 1950s Wolverhampton team was the Wasps, which of course was the nickname taken by a certain Welsh team in 1964. I recall reading that Len Read, formerly of Norwich, Plymouth and Liverpool, was also a prisoner of war, working on the Death Railway in Burma and Thailand.

A number of reasons. I recognise Len Silver's riding style and I know that he rode for Exeter that year, I have the programmes for both meetings mentioned as well as the photo which the Tv Times used, plus I kept details of all meetings from that period.

A friend of mine in Guernsey says it is as described in this reference: https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Mauger

Ray Moore was killed at Oulton Park, Cheshire on 21st March 1964. He was driving a Brabham BT2 FJ-4-62 in an F3 race when he crashed and hit a large tree. The car had previously been driven by Jean Moench and Klaas Twisk and was possibly rebuilt and driven by Frank Williams in F3 in 1965.