Chadster

There were no points limits in those days. 2nd division teams could bring in new riders when they wanted, as Canterbury did when they brought in Wimbledon no. 8, Peter Murray, who helped them win the KO Cup. Although it was supposedly frowned on, Reading brought in Vic White from first division Leicester and Berwick Bill McMillan from Glasgow. Mike Cake and Mick Handley doubled up for their first and second division teams more or ess throughout the season. The following season did see controversy when Romford signed Des Lukehurst from Hackney as iy was argued that he was too good to step down. As for team positions, they seem to have been decided by an average of scores over the previous 6 meetings so a couple of poor meetings could see riders change position and even drop down into the reserve position. I don't think there were hard and fast rules about heatleaders having to ride in positions 1, 3 and 5. I remember seeing Ivan Mauger line up for Newcastle at number 6 the previous season.

Famously, allegedly, Jack Biggs was asked for money so that his rivals would 'go easy' on him in his last race when he needed 1 point to win the world title. He didn't oblige and didn't get the point.. The Duke of Edinburgh was guest of honour at a big post-war meeting, saw some fairly obvious collusion between two team mates and made his disgust plain afterwards. Royalty have never attended a speedway meeting since.

Did they go to the Newspaper library at Colindale in North London? It's moved from there now, I think.

A few weeks ago there was a big golf tournament (The Masters?) and I was reading a preview of it (not much else to do in lockdown). The article mentioned something called 'bifurcation', arising from a fear that improved equipment (clubs, balls etc) and the fact that players were getting generally more powerful was threatening to reduce famous courses to ruin and threatening to turn golf into a sort of pitch and putt. Bifurcation was the view that the top pros should use the old style equipment and leave the modern stuff to the recreational player. Apparently, the article went on, in Baseball the pros use wooden bats not aluminium ones to keep the distance they can hit the ball in check. The problems for golf and baseball are similar to those afflicting speedway but the proposed solutions seem to be the reverse. Wouldn't it be better in speedway if the top riders rode standard bikes? The best way to achieve this would be perhaps for the FIM to insist that their competitions (GP, SoN) would be raced using standard equipment. The practical details would need to be resolved, but if at the highest level you couldn't ride a 'rocket ship', why would you do so at league level? The benefits would be widespread, but whether the FIM would ever do something like this would have to be severely doubted.

Andy Galvin was always guaranteed to get the Wimbledon crowd going.

Norman Strachan?

Unless he's doubling up between Easter and Christmas?

I think Cross is the wrong religious festival so maybe use r/r instead?

Another arrival today!

I'd say that since lockdown started I've enjoyed reading the Star more than ever. I did worry how you were going to cope in the winter without the track reviews but you've made a good start so far. The series on the KO Cup looks as if it will be a winner.

John Dews was captain of Sheffield but was never their number one, same for the Templeton brothers at Edinburgh and Glasgow and Alby Golden at Newport. I recently saw a picture of a 1969 newcastle team with Mike Watkin, not Ole Olsen as skipper.

I was born in November so no one was riding, home or away. I suddenly feel strangely deprived..

I got an email about renewing my BT TV deal. Checking the new packages on offer, there was no mention of Eurosport.

I remember seeing this on TV. Was it about the time rear wheel spoilers came in? I seem to recall Dave Lanning suggesting they had something to do with it.

Shows how bad Hackney were that Patrick Pawson got two points! I was at the the match the following year. Cyril Maidment complained that the announcer was mispronouncing Jancarz's name. Needless to say he got a very dusty response..

Installing the air fence (not really necessary at Rye) more or less ruined the bends as viewing areas.

There are 120 available points in a 20 heat individual meeting. Divide that by 16 and you'd get 8 point something, so the lowest possible winning score would be 9, if my maths is correct, which there's every chance of it not being.

Just like the good old days!

Nigel Boocock (11) and Rick France (9) scored 20 out of 23 in a 55-23 defeat at Belle Vue in 1968 and Boocock got 14 out of 27 at Sheffield the same season. Despite all this one-sidedness Coventry actually won the league that year!

Sheffield had Charlie Monk, John Dews and Brian Maxted score full maximums in a 54-24 win over Belle Vue in 1968. Has any individual done better than Nigel Boocock scoring 16 out of 24 at Wimbledon the same season?. There was certainly one more occasion when he scored over half his teams points that season.

Was at that meeting. Carter broke the track record in his first ride, which didn't sit well with the crowd. Morton came out the next ride and was obviously going for the record and the crowd really got behind him, though he was ahead by a mile. When it was announced that he'd smashed Carter's record the noise was tremendous. And if it needs saying, what a great track Hyde Road was.

1s 6d to get in!

One of the things I noticed watching the SEC was that Lambert may not often have been first into the first bend, but he regularly was coming out of the second bend. I always thought that was a characteristic of Woffinden at his best.

Andy Galvin rode for the Dons a few times as a young kid, but when he came back riding for Hackney he used to wind the crowd up something rotten. Great box office, though

The letter actually says they propose to resume greyhound racing at Poole when the public are allowed back in, a far cry from the implication of the original post.