cityrebel

knowing rye house's luck with the weather it will be more hit than miss.

Have a look on ebay or contact nick barber at enjay designs. Nick always has plenty of old speedway stuff for sale.

Last night was a decent meeting, but the recent stars v poole match was pretty poor for the first 13 heats. Which just goes to show you get good and bad meetings at all tracks.

ok, you are starting to convince me. i've watched the film again and the lamp standards were different when i went there in the 1970's, and the cine film doesn't give you a view of the whole stadium. rayleigh it is then!

sorry to stray off topic. i remember as a kid watching david hamilton and ed stewart have a race at wembley, does anyone else remember this memorable moment!

i've seen ariel photos of rayleigh in the 1950's and it had grandstands on both straights. these stands were still present when i went there in the 1970's. the pits at the weir were at the end of the home straight alongside the main stand, not on the bend like is shown on the cine film.

they said at arlington during the sky meeting it was a 3.30pm start.

if it's true, i can't see uncle len putting up with that kind of nonsense.

it was decent of len to give fans who attended last weeks rain off a £10 discount. so a free meeting tonight offset the money i spent at king's lynn on friday. a battling performance from the hitmen kept the match interesting.

thanks to those excellent photos you can see it's not shelbourne park. with the dog track on the outside of the speedway circuit it's looking more like swindon (pre grandstand) to me.

i've been to stock car racing at both aldershot and st.austell. aldershot was a compact stadium in a built up area with houses nearby. st. austell did have a grandstand on one side apart from that i can't remember too much about it. it's not rayleigh because the weir had stands on both straights with strange lamp standards that leaned over the track. it does look a lot like swindon with it's rural location, as for shelbourne park, i've never seen any photos of that stadium in the mid 1950's.

i tell it how i see it!

weather permitting, this coming saturday sees buxton visit the launch pad. with a general lack of intrest in the raiders this season and weak looking opposition, i can't see this fixture attracting many punters.

as a smallbrook regular it seems a lot of the intrest in the IOW dissapeared when the islanders dropped down into the NL. full credit to all those on the island who keep the track running during these hard times.

The weather is looking dodgy shads, but give len his due, he has made the effort to get the last few meetings on despite the monsoon season. Lessons of previous hasty call offs might have been learnt.

Garrity has hardly got bags of experience, he should be allowed to ride in the Nl.

tough luck on the islanders. with today being a bank holiday, some decent weather might have attracted a good crowd to smallbrook tonight. on the plus side a trip around the shops at pompey with the other half would have cost me a few bob, so i'm quids in!

i saw quite a few rockets fans at lakeside last night complete with team colours, should they have been at hoddesdon supporting the raiders, maybe!. i also noticed the rye house pits marshall working on the track staff, some divided loyalties going on at arena i think!

i regularly go to rye house, lakeside, eastbourne and the iow because that is all there is left locally for me. you can get good and bad meetings at all of those venues. i was a lifelong wimbledon fan from 1968 until 1991, i went during the CL years but was too long in the tooth to consider myself still a fan. my favourite track of all time was west ham, i went to all of those you mention apart from new cross, which was a bit before my time!

the chip shop is usually open for NL meetings at rye.

a lot of the rye regulars i know are not rockets supporters, we were all once fans of london/south east defunct clubs. take away us floaters and it would make quite a difference to any clubs income.

All of the rye regulars i know, myself included will be at lakeside or eastbourne on saturday. It's going to be tough for the raiders to pull in a crowd with two big meetings going on elsewhere in the south east on the same night.

the FIM world cup meeting at lakeside last sunday was £17 to get in and £4 for a prog. it took over 4 hours to run in the baking heat, i wish i had stayed at home. it might be a close run thing to get the meeting completed by curfew time at berwick, the way the FIM run these events.

i'm far too young to have gone to that!, i went to my first ever speedway meeting at wimbledon in september 1968. i never got to west ham until 1970.

jack young had a lot to do with the west ham track being reduced in size in 1954 to 415 yards, it remained this length until it's closure.