WE LIKE WINNERS

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It’s been a long, cold lonely winter….

But here comes the sun…….

Although we’d staged a closed-door, streamed on t’interweb, match for the Bullets earlier that month, the first meeting here in 2021 to which we could invite an — albeit limited – audience wasn’t until May 22nd.

Against Birmingham Brummies.

We lost.

Mainly because we (a) had the unlucky Jye Etheridge taken out the meeting by a first-race crash not of his making and (b) the Brummies’ #1 scored a magnificent paid sixteen points!

Tomorrow night? Well, our fortunes might be better-served.

Not least by our recruitment of the rider who led Birmingham’s challenge last year. At last, after being a thorn in our side for so many years, he’s now actually on our side. The side of the angels….

Welcome to our FTS Bandits, Christopher Calvin Harris!

The most-recent time I saw Bomber in action was back in October. He wore Team GB’s #1 race-jacket, leading the World Champions to an eye-opening one-point victory over Poland at Glasgow, soundly defeating Bartosz Zmarzlik in the process.

The thing about Mr H is no matter where he’s racing, no matter who he’s representing, he has class.

He has it in spades.

Indeed, he has it in every suit -– and now we get to see him in a black-and-gold suit.

Nice.

What’s next? Indeed, who’s next?

Well I should offer a warm welcome to the two guys I’ll be expecting to form a rock-solid boilerhouse as we go looking for points on the road this season.

Both Theo Pijper and Ty Proctor have been there and done it at a number of clubs, each having featured in league-winning teams. Twice!

Theo claimed his medals with Edinburgh in 2003 and later (in 2011) as a Glasgow Tiger.

Ty’s turn was more-recent, having featured in title-winners with Workington in 2018 and the following year at Leicester.

In short, these guys are winners -– and we like having winners here on our side of the pits.

The other new name — at the top of the team, ready to share those tricky Heat 13’s with Bomber — is Ricky Wells, who first popped up in Britain as a teenager in 2009, racing in the top league for Coventry.

Indeed, the Rickster was in the mix at that season’s World U-21 Final in Croatia, which also involved Darcy Ward (who won), Tai Woffinden, Artem Laguta and Maciek Janowski. He keeps classy company!

Ricky had to win his way through two qualifying meetings to ride in the Final at Goricon, one of which was at Rye House where he qualified just ahead of, er, Jamie Courtney. Like I said, classy company.

Other notable Bandit-related under-21s that year who dropped out of the chase in the earlier rounds included guys such as Aaron Summers, Kozza Smith, Matej Kus and, er, Frankie Facher………

Having mentioned our having opened 2021 with live-streaming of racing here at Shielfield -– indeed, we opened and closed (on the same night!) season 2020 the same way — we have the all-new, all-singing, all-dancing British Speedway Network here tomorrow to put the rest of the world in the full HD picture of what happens on a Shielfield Saturday.

As I understand things, they’ll be back here again at some point mid-season. And, of course, for the play-offs!

I’m just thinking, this will be our 54th consecutive season of speedway -– time marches on.

Sometimes it marches awfully quickly. Do you realise that 1968 — the year speedway began here at Shielfield Park and the Beatles put out The White Album — is closer in time to the First World War than to today?

For some of us, that’s tough to swallow -– although no-one who’ll be heading to Shielfield tomorrow night was alive during World War I, it’s a hard fact to get the old head around….

If you were here (I wasn’t) to welcome the original Bandits to town that night in 1968, you ain’t no spring chicken.

Nor indeed am I, despite feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about this brand-new season.

But I don’t need you to remind me of my ever-advancing age. I have a bladder to do that for me.

Let’s go skidding!

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Want to disagree with Dick (as so many do)? He is always happy to hear from interesting people on dick@crystalfm.co.uk