WHEN THE SUN SHINES…..

.
I was well-impressed on Saturday night.

The Shielfield stadium staff gave us a near-perfect venue for our re-opening extravaganza.

I walked around the terracing a couple of hours before the tapes went up, and marvelled at how nicely the old place was turned out.

The grass around the terracing was shorn to within an inch of its life, and the designated sections for standing were laid out with bright white lines.

The sun was shining – and when the sun shines on Shielfield on a speedway Saturday, doesn’t it look good?

We’re lucky to have this venue in these troubled times. With capacity severely limited at all sports stadia, having Shielfield (ground capacity 4,099 for soccer, but more than that for speedway, as we can have folk watching from the first and third turn grass banking) means that our attendances while Covid-restrictions continue can still allow a reasonable roll-up to the turnstiles – or rather, the e-ticket check-in points!

While checking the SFA’s published capacity limits (which remind us of the happier days before those three ominous words “health and safety” entered the lexicon, when over 13,000 could watch the wee Rangers beat the big ones in 1967) I was intrigued to learn that the seating capacity of the main stand is set at 1,361.

I’ve never actually counted the seats, but I’d like to know where that extra single seat is.

To go back to how lucky we are, think of how the current restrictions are severely hampering the other tracks in our Championship, especially the local ones.

With Scotland’s regulations a little bit tighter than those imposed by Buffoon Boris — Edinburgh are limited to very low numbers for their early meetings, and were forced to revert to a ballot for the available tickets for their opening event – which was actually rained off. The same restriction on numbers will prevail however, for this Friday’s match against Redcar.

Glasgow haven’t even opened to public viewing yet, finding a better option for last week’s visit from Kent to be a closed-door streamed event. Their next home date is a week on Friday, with Poole due at Ashfield, and looks like it’ll maybe be a stream-job, too.

As for Newcastle, where I feel Rob Grant has been royally screwed through a shamefully-hidden financial legacy inherited from the outgoing promotion and also hampered by the local council pressing some very heavy demands upon him with regard to crowd limitations, the early meetings at Brough Park will surely test to the limit his desire to run a speedway!

Our Bullets will be hosting Rob’s Newcastle Gems on June 19th in a stand-alone NDL match. I’m hoping we’ll see a healthy turn-out for the young ‘uns – not least after their clobbering of the Colts on Saturday.

Obviously, the Bullets’ big win had folk chattering as they left the stadium – through the extra exits very sensibly opened up to avoid any hodgepodge of people trying to get out one opening at once – and many were talking about Greg Blair’s return to the track after a ten-year lay-off.

That’s right – a full decade, and he comes bouncing back, riding like a young thing!

The Mighty Mythman has gone into Greg’s comeback in greater detail in the blog before this, so all I really need to add is that (a) it would be a lot easier (but less-exciting) if he could get out the gate a bit quicker, and (b) that he’ll be wearing a Bandits’ race-jacket on Saturday night for the visit of Scunthorpe!

OK, it’ll only be the #8 bib, but who knows…..?

Let’s go racing!
.
.
.

Disagree with Dick – as so many do? He is always be happy to hear from interesting people at dick@crystalfm.co.uk