norbold

Any time, TWK! They said it was a grasstrack meeting at the beginning. The racing looked particularly uninspiring I thought, though nevertheless interesting to see Vic Duggan in action.

Yes, correct, steve. The man in the bow tie is Jon Stevens

You are right of course to a certain extent, but does lockdown prevent cancer and heart disease in the same way it does Covid-19 spreading? How many would have died from Covid-19 without strict rules on isolation and distancing? The figures you give are not really comparable.

This is a photo of Terry Mussett next to a man wearing a bow tie, if that helps?

I wouldn't disagree...... ....unless I am trying to sell a book about Tom Farndon.

Yes, something similar for me too. I was interested in speedway some time before I actually went to see a match as two of my uncles had been going to speedway since before the War and often spoke about it. So that, growing up, I would hear stories about Bluey Wilkinson, Jack Parker, Vic Duggan, Jack Young and so on. I used to follow speedway results in the newspaper and watch it on the odd occasions it was on telly. My own heroes were Split Waterman, Aub Lawson and Brian Crutcher, so, again, even to this day they have held a special place in my memory of the "greats". By a strange twist of fate, when I did go to see my first meeting, the very first heat brought together Split Waterman and Aub Lawson and I also bought a copy of Speedway World and the front page headline news story was about Brian Crutcher. Also, at my very first meeting, Ove Fundin scored an immaculate 18 point maximum. It has been very hard in the 60 years since to shake me from the belief that Ove is the greatest rider of all time.

I think that is patently untrue. I think it more likely that most people's memories and ideas on who are/were the greatest riders are more likely to be the riders we first saw. I know in my case, for example, the likes of Ove Fundin, Barry Briggs and Ronnie Moore are the yardstick by which other riders have to be considered.

And no mention of Vivian Woodward either, certainly one of the greatest players of all time.

If we're going for Wimbledon riders I've actually seen riding in Wimbledon colours, I'd go for Ronnie Moore, Barry Briggs, Ron How, Sverre Harrfeldt, Olle Nygren, Gote Nordin, Bob Andrews, Edward Jancarz, Reg Luckhurst and Terry Mussett.

I believe that later in life his daughter married a Mr Mussett and their son became a speedway rider....

I've heard of all of those except Terry Mussett. Are you sure he rode for Wimbledon?

Next Wednesday (20 May), the Talking Pictures TV Channel has a programme entitled, "West Country Gazette". It’s synopsis reads, "1948. We take a look at a speedway track outside St Austell where Vic Duggan makes an appearance....."

I don't know if anyone remembers a board game called Wembley. It was a football game, the idea being to win the FA Cup. All the League teams of the time were included. So as not to get silly results, but to retain the possibility of upsets, there were six different dice, so that red was a First Division Team at home down to white being a third division team away. I can't remember now what the actual numbers were on each side of the dice, but the red dice would include high numbers (5&4) and perhaps just one zero, whereas the white dice would have 2 or 3 zeros and so on. If you're still awake, what I am leading to is that the way I played speedway was with these dice, by throwing red for the home heat leader, down to the white for the away reserve. For individual trophies, I gave the Big Five the red dice and so on. Bob Andrews once won one of my World Championship Finals!

Buzz is also an all-time speedway legend.

My profile photo is of Vic Huxley and Billy Lamont.

I used to play whole County Championship seasons with Owzat! I got to know the names of all the cricketers and which county they played for through that.

I never quite made it in mine. I was one of the best riders but never as good as Roger Gooding or Chris Friendship, two classmates of mine!

It seems highly unlikely that there would be an "official" Test match at High Beech in 1948. It was just a training track at the time; I don't think there were any matches of any sort that year, let alone an Official Test match. No idea who Ronnie Smith is either - he doesn't appear in Stenners' 1949 Who's Who in Speedway. I am wondering if maybe this was a birthday or Christmas present to a little lad called Ronnie Smith made up by his parents? Or perhaps Ronnie Smith was one of the trainees and it was a bit of a joke.

Peter Lipscomb

What more details do you require other than those already in the comments section?

It wouldn't have mattered. It was my brother who named me.

Norman Parker was a very special rider. I think it therefore goes without saying that anyone named after him must be very special too....

I have seen a copy of the cover you posted before (in fact I have a copy saved in my "Eastbourne" file), but I have never seen the whole programme.

Just to add, that when i was researching for my book, "75 Years of Eastbourne Speedway", I spent many happy days at the Colindale Newspaper Library searching through the Eastbourne Gazette and Eastbourne Courier files. I had read Homes of British Speedway, so I started my search for any mentions of speedway or dirt track racing at Arlington at the beginning of August 1928. The first mention I found, was the one I quoted above from 5 October 1928. There was absolutely nothing about speedway or dirt track racing before that. Honest, guv.

I can't see how there could have been an unofficial meeting in September 1928, seeing as the future track was just a field at the time and it wasn't until October that any work started on turning it into a dirt track. What contemporary sources are there for the 1928 meeting?