Final hopes, final pointers, injury parade, superheroes and kilts

Friday 17 July, 7.30pm: Glasgow Tigers v R.E.D Bandits, powered by STS. Cab Direct Championship

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Saturday 18 July, 7pm: R.E.D Bandits, powered by STS v Redcar Bears. BSN Series semi-final, second leg.

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A reminder that Season Passes are NOT valid for Saturday’s cup semi-final. Holders are entitled to claim admission at the concessionary rate. Either buy a concessionary E-ticket or pay cash at the Box Office on the night. Your pass will be proof of eligibility.

Will the skipper be celebrating again on Saturday? Picture: Keith Hamblin

Ω With all due respect to our friends from Possilpark, Friday night’s visit to the Tigers, still smarting from their second home defeat of the season at the hands of Edinburgh, is something of a warm-up act for Saturday’s semi-final.

Mission Incredible

Mission Improbable

But definitely not Mission Impossible.

We need 59 points to knock the holders out and earn the right to meet Poole in the final. Redcar need 32 points to secure a repeat of last year’s final. A 58-32 win for the Bandits would result in a tie sending the meeting into a Super Heat and the crowd berserk.

Bandits average 55.8 points per meeting from their last five Shielfield Park outings. Redcar’s last away meeting at Edinburgh on Friday night, saw them beaten 33-57.

The elements are there for a night when Bandits’ folklore is rewritten but before then there will be a buzz of activity at physiotherapists, masseuses, chiropractors, hyperbaric chambers, bana-bhuidseach and holistic healers throughout the Borders and further afield and any legal pain killers and anti-inflammatories available as we seek to get our best seven fit and on-track.

With six of the nine Championship sides in action on Friday and Workington meeting Poole the following evening guest options are going to be at a premium this weekend.

Better that Jye, elbow, and PK, shoulder, find themselves in the pits along with Nick, providing he can get to the bottom of a mystery back injury which has hampered him for a while now.

And which exploded in the pits at Ipswich on Thursday night when, what is thought to be a severely trapped nerve, caused so much pain that he had to sign out of the meeting and miss the trip to Devon.

Nick has been seeking advice from a plethora of potential healers, both traditional and alternative – in addition to more massage and manipulation.

Successful as the treatments initially seemed to be there is nothing like a 500cc speedway bike – especially one ridden with the ferocity and fearlessness shown by Nick – to twist back, ribs and spine into un-natural angles and release the pain.

Fingers crossed as a firing-on-all cylinders Morris will definitely give Redcar something to think about.

Ω A reminder that not all superheroes wear capes.

Some come dressed in Bandits’ polo shirts, of even Blacks Paint and Body motifed leisurewear.

Problem. No Jye + no Nick = two guests. Team racesuits means two old-fashioned body colours and requisite rivet and popstudded number squares required, in Plymouth by 6.30ish at the latest on Saturday.

Problem. Said jackets exist but on Friday evening are in the speedway office at Shielfield Park – 470 miles away.

Usually one of the three town-based riders would become designated couriers but with Etheridge and Morris not travelling and Reid Battye already in the Midlands that plan is scuppered.

Option 4: mechanic to the stars Jamie Robertson – who could have solved Friday’s Armadale burger van inferno single-handedly without recourse to West Lothian Fire and Rescue – also missing from the Berwick-based speedway factory working on Peter Kildemand’s machinery down country after the Dane raced at Northampton on Thursday.

Cometh the hour, cometh BanditsTV commentator, Speedway Star reporter and Berwick programme columnist James “Mythman” Black.

Now every superhero needs a sidekick and Bibman’s Robin was co-commentator Marty Clyde. As luck would have it the two were already booked on a Saturday afternoon flight from Newcastle to Bristol with plans to pick up a hire car and head for the Devon riviera.

A slight detour to Berwick en-route from the Borders to Woolsington and the bibs were heading south. Despite a nail-bitingly long delay disembarking at Bristol airport they arrived 20 minutes before tapes uptheir deliverers heading to the bar for a well-earned scrumpy and pastie or two.

Ω Watching live the dynamic duo was oblivious to the, at times somewhat surreal commentary on the Plymouth livestream – perhaps for the cup final we can arrange for James and Marty to offer an S4C style “North Britain” alternative commentary option.

Now I get that livestream commentators are enthusiastic amateurs and volunteers and that talking for two and three-quarter hours when at Plymouth, even with an astonishing ten reruns, racing amounts to little more than 15 minutes, is no easy task.

I must admit it came as something of a shock to me and undoubtedly fellow Borderers to discover – via PlymouthLive’s Jethro and Wurzel – that Berwick is full of Scotsmen – and wannabe Scots –  dressed in kilts, north Berwick is nearer to the border than Shielfield Park and the return fixture is scheduled for Berrington.

Or that Stewart Dickson was working his usual magic in the pits, ringing the changes and rallying the troops, when the canny Scot was tuned in along with us hundreds of miles north after transport issues meant Bandits’ owner Jamie Courtney was the man holding the team manager reigns.

And in case you were baffled by the rambling AI reference … in last week’s Speedway Star, next to Dick Barrie’s weekly words of wisdom, veteran journalist Peter Oakes suggested that Plymouth’s website previews (not the programme as the commentators believed) may have been generated by non-human hands in the shape of ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Decide for yourself by reading the Berwick preview here

Ω I’ve long believed club livestreams miss a trick – although not if you listen to the rounded and articulate, if occasionally a little excitable, Marty and James on BanditsTV – of totally misreading the make-up of their audience.

Admittedly without having the figures to back it up, I’m convinced that a majority of streams are bought by fans of the visiting team and neutrals and yet the commentary is invariably slewed, sometimes embarrassingly so, towards the home side.

Ω So what did we learn from the Knockout Cup Final dress rehearsal?

Well apart from the fact that Plymouth is a difficult track to master on an occasional basis … not a lot.

For the Gladiators, guest Troy Batchelor was paid for 12, roughly what you would expect from the man he replaced, Danny King, while rider-replacement yielded nine points from four rides, again pretty much the anticipated haul of missing Gladiator, Ben Barker.

On the other side of the pits IRR brought a solitary point from two rides, you would have anticipated a minimum of three more from Peter, and while Luke Killeen was paid for a very creditable paid nine from five rides it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Nick could have made a couple of starts and brought more points.

But the real downer was at number two where Michael Palm Toft managed just two third places. The missing man, Jye Etheridge, has scored 21, paid 23, from his previous two visits to The Coliseum and we missed his contribution badly.

How Daniel Klima, Anze Grmek and Ben Whalley ride Shielfield Park will be revealed – European commitments permitting – on July 25, the dates for the final to follow sometime in the future.

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Reid takes in the unusual surroundings of The ColiseumΩ Speaking of fixtures. We can confirm that there will be home meetings on 22 and 29 August against either Poole, Redcar or Edinburgh. Dates have been offered to all three teams and we are awaiting confirmation as to who rides when and a third date yet to be revealed for the outlier of the trio.

Plymouth pictures: Ebony March