iris123

Absolutely. But he only worked for the SLP. I bet the local journalists knew who Terry was.....

Yes and Ray was one of the few local lads. Not too many London or South London riders. Steve Schofield I think came from just round the corner though, Plus of course Terry Mussett and Steve Hone. One who rode for us and the other who didn’t. But both now infamous for upsetting gustix it seems

That is of course possible. And not wanting to be negative, but the reason the start gate was used, was to stop the chaos and constant false starts and re-runs that happened in the days of rolling starts

Yes by then I was doing shifts, so had no option other than to miss meetings now and again working from 6-6

Bit of footage of the 1955 meeting in Warsaw. Can’t seem to find it other than through FB https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2726512007402626&id=319207201466464

Can’t remember it off hand. But tbh it doesn’t surprise me. I don’t have a great memory of individual meetings like say Sid does. If I look at my Programmes and it is in my collection, then I was there I might have even been at the same Glasgow meeting . I went to. Glasgow v Wimbledon one year around that time. But I was mainly up for the footie and it coincided

I ignored him

Yes. Just a day or so ago saw a report on Mario Götze scorer of the World Cup winning goal, which of course means he can’t be classed as a failure. But how he went from a wonder kid to a player who at I think 27 nobody seems to want after years of underachieving One or two classic examples though were the young kid who was training with Ajax and another I remember was Cherno Samba at Millwall, who Liverpool offered a million pounds for before he even played for the first team. A wonder kid, who never made it

Talk on another thread brought back memories of those two seasons Todd had with us. Not sure I can really recall another newcomer who had such an instant impact on the club. Obviously I wasn't born when Mirac arrived. Tatum was also a great youngster..... https://wwosbackup.proboards.com/thread/3143/todd-wiltshire

The trouble is, and it is exactly what I stated the other day, there have been a number of threads started on the same topic. And what happens is interesting and important posts then get forgotten or have to be repeated. As I think one of the points were some of those early squads were wrong

Fair enough Steve. Not everyone takes to a rider, and certainly most have different stages in their careers. I never really took to DJ or Simmo when they came to Plough Lane. Possibly because I associated them with other teams by then. On the other hand I did like Hines when he came, even though he was a Witch through and through Was he a favourite of Rob's then ?

I’d say 2005 I think, was also a great year. Here in Germany there was Matze Schultz, Hefenbrock, Smolinski, Kroner, Wölbert and a few other youngsters all coming through at the same time. The one from Bavaria who was also a kick boxer who I think went to Berwick for a while and Danny Knakowski, who ended up in prison

Just where would Todd Wiltshire come in the Aussie list? Looked to be on the way to the top for me in those early days. But then Wimbledon closed and I lost interest in the sport. He had a bad injury I know, but did it stop his progress or had he already reached his peak ?

Back to the topic and it is very difficult to make any stats out of a few world final appearances for most riders. The figures for the GPS give a far better idea of who does best against his contemporaries

Which sort of brings me to another rider. The one U21 final I attended at Canterbury was when Havelock won with Andy Silver 2nd and Darren Sumner 3rd. He then went on to win the year after , but didn’t really fulfill the early promise and got out of the sport relatively quickly. But it was a great period for England with Loram and Smudger etc

I do remember one meeting in Güstrow, a relatively small track. Andy was held up, so they delayed the meeting. He got changed in the motor on the way and when he did arrive and the meeting got under way he was the highlight. Great passing skills and a nice guy, loved by the crowd in Germany

A good spoof was the Only a game programme where they took the p out of the English attitude by doing a commentary of the 1974 World Cup final where the commentator just talked about the English referee Jack Taylor and didn’t mention the foreigners

But we had this discussion a couple of weeks back elsewhere. And the feeling also came from Dave Lanning's commentary at the time, with Jerzy. Lanning felt the ref was doing everything in hi power to get a polish champ....as well as what you have said

Think you have blown everything out of proportion. Only a while back I mentioned a thread about Dave Morton, where I posted what I thought was an innocuous post and the same thing happened to me. Again I have nothing against you, nor do I against gustix or anyone. I can lock horns with someone on one topic and on the very next I can agree with them. I think BWitcher can confirm that. If gustix posts a decent post I will agree with him. Most of the time unfortunately, and for whatever reason I have no idea, he tries to disrupt the forum or put the boot into speedway, and I don't agree with that the trouble is, instead of people saying that to him, they think the one or two who can be bothered, are bullying.......

Yes, but isn’t it the start that is harder on the bikes ? So probably means more cost to the riders for little gain . Just a thought

Yes, I remember seeing Phil Morris do one of those one lap track record attempts. Social distancing at its best, but boring as watching paint dry

That is right, but I imagine after that initial track building they then built some sort of stadium around it on the basis they had a years license. Were they then too keen and went ahead without going through the proper procedures or did Kent overstep the norm ? Surely they then had grounds for compensation for the work done ?

Scandalous from the council to overturn that decision. Do you know if the promoters got any compensation for their track work ?

M-V one of the hot beds of speedway and with a long track at Parchim as well are allowing events with a limit of 150 people outdoors take place in a few weeks. So not much help for Güstrow, Teterow and Stralsund.... Could mean the new planned track in Neubrandenburg can do their noise tests though But already one or two areas have seen a rise in cases and calls to clamp things down again, locally....