norbold

Right then, to return to the main issue. I think I would like to sum up my own view on the Johnnie Hoskins saga like this... In my opinion there is no doubt that Johnnie Hoskins is a towering figure in the history of speedway. No-one doubts that he did much to advance speedway in the early pioneering days of the sport in Australia and he certainly did a lot to publicise the sport in this country from his arrival in 1928 right up until his death in 1987. You only have to read back copies of the speedway press to see what an enormous influence he had and the amount of publicity he generated. He helped bring speedway either to new tracks or to ones that had closed including Crystal Palace, Newcastle, Glasgow, New Cross and Canterbury (amongst others). He was a showman of the first order and could put thousands on the gate (when speedway crowds numbered in the thousands!) Johnnie Hoskins was a larger than life character who should be remembered fondly and in some reverence for the outstanding contribution he made to speedway. What he did not do however was to invent the sport. The meeting at Maitland on 15 December 1923 was no different to dozens of other meetings that were being held and had been held at race tracks across Australia for at least a decade. The evidence for this statement is overwhelming and irrefutable. In my view to continue to pretend he did invent speedway does both him and the other pioneers of the sport a real injustice. Him, because the argument goes on and on over the Maitland meeting overshadowing all the other great things he did for speedway which tend to get lost in the controversy surrounding this. Others, because, of course, their names have been airbrushed out of history due to the ongoing debate over Hoskins's role. Please let us remember Hoskins as the great speedway man he was for the great things he did for the sport and give him his rightful place as a speedway legend while at the same time recognising what he did not do and that other people were far more instrumental in actually founding the sport than he was and let's continue the real research into the origins of speedway, which is a fascinating subject in its own right.

Is that a promise, Dave? Phew!

No interest in? Have I imagined all those posts above then or is there someone pretending to be you posting on a subject you have "absolutely no interest in"? Also, if you have "absolutely no interest in" the subject, how is it that you think you know more about it than people who have spent years researching into the subject and are interested in it?

I hope that includes the Maitland Mercury from 17 December 1923, Dave. Incidentally you can read the full story of Johnnie Hoskins's involvement with Crystal Palace and how it came about it the article I wrote for Speedway Star back in 2010. That's another newspaper article you could read, Dave.

Thanks, Steve. that would be great if you could do that.

There is a chart showing just that in Maurice Jones's book "World Speedway Final". I don't know if there is an on-line equivalent. But I can copy out the firsts and last of all of them from the book if you would like to see it.

Just remembered, thanks to prompting from Nigel, an article published in the 1948 People Speedway Guide written by John Addison, Sports Editor of The People. It begins: "They called it dirt track racing in the early days. But no-one seems to know when the sport began. Johnnie Hoskins, Grand Old Man of the Speedway has decided that the first meeting of all was in November 1923, at West Maitland. I wonder now, going back through the hazy, petrol-ridden, cinder-showered past whether or not the great John S. Hoskins has slipped...." He then goes on to write about a conversation he had with A. J Hunting who also claimed to have "invented" speedway. Dear me, how confusing. Seeing as how we have established above that people's memories are infallible, what are we to make of this?

Quite right, mick. This must be the first time ever in the history of the BSF that a thread has wandered slightly off topic. Personally, I blame waihekeaces1 for saying in the opening post on his own topic, "Hans Nielsen and anyboy"

Sadly, from what I've heard and read, Tom Farndon didn't go in much for team riding. He was more of an individual. And I know Wimbledon were the sworn enemy but you can't take it away from Ronnie Moore, possibly - no, probably - the greatest team rider of all time. Other great team riders would include Norman Parker, Ken McKinlay and Kelvin Mullarkey. Perhaps we could form a coalition, arnie...oh no, you're already taken!

Ronnie Moore and anyone

Ken McKinlay and Stan Stevens

Thank you for the link, olddon. I see the site says, "On Saturday, June 16 of 1928 though, Joe Carley1 reports that he "visited White City, Old Trafford, to see the very first Speedway meeting held in Manchester." Leaving aside the disputed meeting at Droylsden on 25 June 1927, a speedway meeting was held at Audenshaw, Manchester, on 3 March 1928 (over three months before the meeting at White City). Amongst those taking part were Keith McKay, Billy Galloway, Alec Jackson, Ginger Lees, Bob Harrison and Acorn Dobson. You see, Jack, you can't always rely on people's memories.

Johnnie Hoskins and modest....hmmmm....let me think about that one.....

Well that highly authoritative source is proof for me....

I'm not saying you can, but neither can you say that only those riding from the 60s onwards are the greatest "ever".

When people say the "greatest of all time" is that what they really mean? Why do people who say this never mention Tom Farndon, Vic Huxley, Bluey Wilkinson, Vic Duggan, Jack Young, Jack Parker etc. etc.? Is it because they are (mostly) outside living memory, so it's really a case of the greatest rider of recent years, which is not the same thing at all as the "greatest of all time".

There isn't a lot on record about Rotherham (Bramley) speedway as far as I know. It only operated from 1929 - 1930. A crowd of 3,000 was said to have seen the first meeting on 18 May 1929. 35 meetings were held in 1929 and 5 in 1930. The last meeting was on 9 June 1930.

That excellent book, "70 Years of Rye House Speedway", gives the result as 33-38 (raced on 24 May). This is confirmed in that other excellent book, "75 Years of Eastbourne Speedway".

It's a good point, olddon. I think that in the early days the two names were used interchangeably though it is probable that the term dirt track applied to the actual sport, while speedway applied to the venue itself, as it seems to be in the case you quote and was certainly the case in Australia from about mid 1924 onwards. It would seem that in this country at least the term speedway became synonymous with the sport itself when Speedway News, under A J Hunting, became established in May 1928.

I don't think they ever all actually rode together in the Southampton team. 1959: Mardon, Taylor and Bradley 1960: Nygren, Taylor and Bradley 1961: Roger and Bradley

Funnily enough, the original intended venue for Jack Hill-Bailey and the Ilford Motor Cycle and Light Car Club's first meeting was a trotting track at Parsloes Park before it all fell through and they moved it to an old cycle track at High Beech..... I believe Jack Parker was a trials rider before turning to speedway and Gus Kuhn was a road racer. He competed in the Isle of Man TT, coming 5th in the Junior Division in 1926.

The report of the meeting on 15 December shows there were three motor-cycle racing events. The first was a three quarter mile event; the second a two mile event and the third a four mile event. The first two events were handicap events; I'm not sure about the third. No handicaps are shown for the four mile event. I don't know how many riders there were in each race; the newspaper only records the first three. As far as I know the Maitland track was grass. I should add that as well as the motor-cycle racing there was cart racing, bicycle racing, trotting races, athletics events and something called "Threading the Needle" race. In the early days, other Carnival event programmes seem to consist of much the same sort of motor-cycle racing and other events. Thebarton Oval (South Australia) held several similar events from 1921 onwards, also on grass, but by January 1923 (11 months before the Maitland meeting), the surface had been converted to cinders, so was a proper (what we would now call) dirt track. This meeting was held under floodlights.

Sorry, White Knight. I know you are right, but all I ever wanted was to discuss Johnnie Hoskins role in the origins of speedway. BFD made a statement early on that the meeting on 15 December 1923 was the first to be held under the banner of speedway, which, if true, would add to the argument that Hoskins "invented" speedway. I have asked BFD several times what evidence he has for saying this as it will help towards understanding the place of that meeting in speedway history but every time he falls back on some pretext to avoid answering the question. The only first hand evidence I have seen of that meeting is, as I have already said, the report of the meeting in the Monday December 17, 1923 edition of the Maitland Daily Mercury. Nowhere is the word speedway mentioned; it is referred to as motor-cycle racing throughout. In addition the paper adds the information that "several other tracks have been used for this kind of sport on a number of occasions". Now, this seems to me to be pretty clear cut that the meeting on 15 December 1923 was not the first of its kind, nor was it called speedway. All I am trying to get from BFD is more information to support his statement that this meeting was the first to be held under the banner of speedway. As a historian, interested in facts, that's all I am asking. Is it too much?

If it makes you happy to think so, Dave, carry on. (Though, actually, I can't help thinking that people are more interested in furthering the debate on Johnnie Hoskins's role in the origins of speedway than in whether I apologise to you or not and therefore would be much more interested in an answer from you to the question I have asked than in your constant prevarication). Anyway, I did answer your substantive point in my next post which, although much longer than the one you have chosen to reply to, you seem to have somehow overlooked.