Ashie

Would you like to borrow my glasses? Gollob was pushed out by the pack, the clearest case of all 4 back if ever there was, so how you can use that race to justify a dig at the Polish referee is beyond me.

Aaagh too late... I wanted to ask about an incident I only vaguely recall myself at Long Eaton when he rode for Mildenhall. It was a wet Station Road and he led a walkout of Mildenheal senior riders who refused to take part, so we had the farcical scenes of LE riders going round for 5-1s. I am sure that he would say it was too dangerous but then on the other side if the LE riders and the Mildenhall juniors were happy to race, why did he force the walkout? That was the days of the junior matches and I recall that the Mildenhall juniors were more than happy to race and took part in their meeting. Oh well, guess will never know.

Interesting extract from the new book about Nottingham speedway, taken from the Nottingham Evening Post last week. Ironically through my job I was chatting to a lady who this week whom I have known for a couple of years and she lives up north, never spoke about speedway to her before and no idea how the subject of speedway came up but it turns out her dad used to be one of the co promotors of Nottingham at Long Eaton.. small world.

Thanks for that, great to finally see who the man was. Before my time, but I beleive he must have rode for Long Eaton at one time or another? My dad gave me one of his old Australian race jackets (not sure how my dad came to have it). Never really new much about the man but the race jacket ended up being thrown away which I regret now.

Drury certainly rode for Long Eaton Invaders, not sure he rode for the Outlaws.

Not sure, bit before my time. I assume the Nottingham name was used to attract people from Nottingham, but I am sure someone will confirm or correct this. The Nottingham Outlaws raced at Station Road, which is Long Eaton and technically is in Derbyshire so seems a bit strange to me, but hey ho. LE is actually on the border of Nottm and Derbyshire, about 6 miles each way. In my opinion since my time watching speedway very little was made to attract people from the rest of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. During our title winning year of 84, we were sponsored by Radio Trent which is Nottinghams local independent station, hard to tell if that or the success resulted in higher crowds. But apart from small speedway pieces in the Nottm and Derby paper there was never a big marketing campaign to get people in from the two big cities. heck, for a long time the local Long Eaton paper never even covered speedway.

I will back you up on that, I also seem to recall an incident with the LE start marshall the season after the incident mentioned earlier in the thread.

I would love to know what happened to the 1984 Long Eaton speedway team that won the title.

I have seen many bad crashes with riders walking away, but the strangest was down at Exeter. Carl Blackbird for Long Eaton in the last race of one match if I recall correctly, might even of been a last heat decider, not sure now. But he went into the last bend leading when suddenly his handlebar just gave way or snapped and down he went. Very strange.

Seems like a great publication for someone like me who lived in the Speedway age of the Eighties and Nineties and as not been to a meeting in oooh when did Long Eaton close again? LoL Will be subscribing for sure. Will you be doing a feature on LE at all?

No idea I am afraid. I left the area for London after it closed and only got back to Nottingham last month, I have completly lost track of all my Speedway buddies. I drove by last week, very ghostly site now.

I think she used to drive stock cars at Station Road too for a while if I recall correctly.

I was only 10 at the time, so my memory is not too good, but I do recall winning the fours and pairs a lot better Remember the female start marshall we had for a couple of years, I cant remember her name though.

By all accounts the meeting of the season that year and sods law was the only meeting I missed that year. Typical Andy Galvin was never liked after that.

I'm not sure if this is the same person that I remember because he was quite young and used to stand in different places, not in one spot. I used to dread it if I was on my own and he used to come and stand next to me. I'm sure he was harmless but he used to scare me to death and I always looked away hoping he wouldn't pick me to talk to. I know who you mean, he used to wear a grey jacket, very 80's looking, even in the late 90's I never actually got to know the guy, very strange fan, would wear Long Eaton tinted glasses and would swear and shout up at the ref's box if a decision went the wrong way. Never saw him at away matches though But like someone said, you would dread it when he would start heading towards you to chat. Still, that's what speedway was all about, characters.