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| Your Memories |
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Les Gustafson says: By the
summer of 1966, the South Shields and Newcastle clubs had managed to
come in to contact with each other and race competitive matches, but had
not yet ridden against teams from outside the confines of Tyneside. This
was not to say that they were unaware of Cycle Speedway activities in
the wider world; exposure to Harold Smith’s excellent Cycle Speedway
annuals of 1965 and 1966 and to Robin Martakies’ highly-professional
Cycle Speedway Record showed that the nearest geographical location of
the sport was Edinburgh – and a highly-organised centre at that, with
several league divisions, and the ability to organise international
matches with England. (The two publications, mentioned above, were not just packed
with facts and figures and addresses, but also contained many
photographs showing how riders and their bikes looked, the way tracks
were built and shaped, starting techniques, etc.)
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| The best-known Edinburgh
administrator was Ian Branston; imaginatively known as “Pickles” by his
Scottish colleagues – and he ran the Granton club. I wrote to him some
time in the summer of 1966 and he was kind enough to send me copies of
the Edinburgh CS magazine – called ‘Smoke signals’, I think – as well as
blank programme formats and some actual match programmes showing
results. This was especially useful, as we had been using Speedway
formats in our racing, and Cycle Speedway matches were run over a
different number of heats, ending with a nominated race where the riders
were selected just prior to the heat itself (at this time, cycle
speedway still used the 3-2-1-0 points format). |
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| We in Shields were
already trackless by this time and rider activity was at a low point.
Mike Dobson and I used to ride in Newcastle meetings, but many of the
Shields riders were inactive. Lack of a track was a serious handicap, so
when the question of racing against team(s) from Edinburgh came up, it
was entirely logical that the venue should be Newcastle and the matches
organised by the Newcastle club, which had moved from the track in
Moorland Park to a more suitable location on Monkchester Rec, and had
also enlisted adult participation in running the club. |
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The coach from Edinburgh
came down to Newcastle on 6th October 1966. Ian Branston
brought two of his intermediate teams – Granton Griffins ‘A’ and Belle
Vue Aces, with each side riding a match against Newcastle Vikings and
Trow Lea Mariners. I’m fairly certain that the track was not the one
usually associated with Monkchester Rec, rather one parallel to where
the main track would be, but closer to the housing on the other side of
the Rec (?) One thing is sure, however, that it was very muddy due to
heavy rain for some days previously, and as the various matches
progressed, came to resemble a quagmire. |
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| We only managed a scratch
team that day, tracking just four riders from our own resources and
supplementing them by local riders not in the Newcastle line-up. Oddly,
Gess Atkinson wasn’t in the Newcastle team that day and we were pleased
to add him to our match programme, especially so because he managed two
heat wins in a nine-point total against the griffins. Eddie Murray was
another loanee and he scored the other heat win we managed against the
Griffins. We lost heavily against both Griffins and Aces, but Newcastle
ran the Griffins very close in their match, and logic suggests that they
may have defeated the Aces – but the Newcastle v Griffins score sheet
was only unearthed very recently, and there appears to be no sign of any
programme for their match against Belle Vue. I also remember the
after-match, slap-up tea in one of the Monkchester Rec huts, which was
all the more welcome as we were absolutely shattered and still had to
pedal all the way home to Shields. |
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| (In fact, a recently-unearthed report from the Cycle
Speedway Gazette of the time shows that Newcastle lost by a
greater margin against the Aces than against the Griffins). |
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| Strangely enough, Trow
Lea did much better in Edinburgh two weeks later – both from the point
of view of own-rider participation and performance (we tracked six
riders who had appeared in South Shields matches in 1965 and early
1966). At Pilrig Park (an ordinary hard-earth circuit) Doug Atkinson
scored 8 points, including two heat wins, and at Davidsons mains (a
Rolls-Royce of a track compared to anything we’d ever seen) I got 8
points, including a last-heat 5-1 with Mike Dobson – in virtual
darkness, as the clocks had just gone back, but Doug and myself were
just in supporting roles to Mike Dobson, who scored 10 points in the
first match and twelve points in the second one, with five heat wins
from his ten rides. We just lacked a third solid scorer in each match. |
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Heat 14 of
Hawkhill Hammers v Newcastle Vikings – on Gate Four for Newcastle is Len
Bage and his team-mate Norman Carson on Two |
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| The two photographs
above are of action at Davidsons Mains, Edinburgh’s premier
track, during the Sixties. Dave Beecroft has correctly
identified evergreen John Murphy as the rider in 2nd
place in the first photograph. John is still taking to the
tracks fifty years later - although sadly not at Davidsons
Mains, as there is now only one Edinburgh track, in the town’s
Redbraes Park. |
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| Of all the tracks we
visited over the next few years; in Halifax, Bradford, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, Tamworth, Tipton, Warwick and Kingstanding; Davidsons
Mains was by far my favourite venue, and it was a great pleasure to go
back there again in 1967 and defeat the Griffins on their own strip,
especially as I scored 9 points paid 10) – wish I could have raced there
every week |
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| On the subject of tracks – Trow Lea’s two tracks in The Nest and Newcastle’s Moorland Park were
essentially grass tracks where the main riding lines had worn down to
the earth surface. Trow Lea used bamboo stakes to mark out the inside
line until they were abandoned after numerous punctures and damaged
spokes. The outside line on the home straight was the cliff face. After
we were ejected from The Nest, the grass grew back and no sign remained
of where the tracks had been. According to old notes, the Trow Lea track
record was around 45 seconds, and match programmes for early 1966 show
race times of around 33 seconds for Moorland Park – no wonder we
couldn’t get going there ! The race was over before we’d blinked. Boldon
Crusaders’ strip at The Swingfields was an earth surface, and heat times
varied between 48 and 52 seconds. On a wet day, when the surface was
more like a skating rink, times could be up to 55 seconds. Newcastle’s
Monkchester Rec circuit was also an earth surface, and photographs show
old fire-hose marking the inside line. The bends were tight and the
track length around 60 yards(?) |
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Map of
South Shields sea-front showing Trow Lea. The Nest is the U-shaped hollow just
below the “a” at the end of Lea” |
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| South Shields Temple Park
track was 90 yards in length, with a tarmac starting grid. The fire-hose
which formed the original inside line was replaced by a brick lining.
the third and fourth bends were heavily banked – which sometimes led to
drainage problems – and the first and second bends had; if anything – a
slightly adverse camber, but the size and width of the bends made
passing on the outside possible, even if different techniques were
needed. The original track surface was black grit, but it did not bed in
well, and was replaced by more conventional red brick dust – but not all
at once, so the track had a two-tone appearance for a while, races were
not timed on any regular basis, but one old match programme gives heat
times of about 50 seconds |
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Construction of
top bend at Temple Park |
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More Memories
From
Les
Gustafson |
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| Ray Turner and Mike
Dobson, South Shields Individual Champions of 1967 and 1965, respectively,
line up on the outside grids in an individual meeting at Newcastle. Inside
them are Peter Burns and Norman Carson of Newcastle. Ray could probably
lay justifiable claim to the title “1966 Tyneside Rider of the Year”,
having started the season with a 20-point haul in the inaugural Tyneside
Test Match and ended the year as Tyneside Best Pairs Champion (with Keith
Thompson), scoring a 15-point max in the process. He could certainly have
taken first place in a Freddie and the Dreamers look-alike contest (see
the photos in the Newcastle 1965-70 section). |
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| Mike Dobson probably
considered Keith Thompson and Jim Braney as challengers to his position as
the leading rider in Shields at the start of the 1966 season, but by the
end of the year he was the undisputed top rider, as his two double-figure
scores on the October trip to Edinburgh demonstrated. |
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| The Tyneside Best
Pairs of 1966 was denied a last-heat confrontation between Ray and Mike
when the latter was excluded for moving at the gate. |
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| If that meeting had doubled as the Individual Championship
then Ray would have been the runaway winner, racing unbeaten in
his five rides. Mike would have been runner-up, ahead of Les
Gustafson by virtue of more heat wins within the same points
total. Norman Carson was the other double-figure scorer with 10
points. |
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| The climax of the 1968 Tyneside Test at Newcastle - Ray
Turner hits the front for Shields in the final heat, while Newcastle’s
Kenny Kerr tries to squeeze between him and Jim Graham. On the sidelines
(2nd from the left in his Shields breastplate and holding the clip-board)
rider-manager Les Gustafson looks on optimistically, as Shields need only
a 3-3 to clinch victory, but trailing Terry Kirkup somehow manages to come
through to win the heat and Kenny Kerr relegates Jim Graham to last place.
The resulting 4-2 for Newcastle ties the match at 53-53. |
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| Trow Lea Mariners travelled to
as many away tracks as possible, given the constraints of transport –
partly to do with the long period of having no home track, but also from a
desire to experience as many different types of track as possible (from
Halifax’s saucers to Kingstanding’s more substantial circuit, and others
in between). The only time we didn’t give a halfway-decent account of
ourselves was at Bridgend in Edinburgh in late ’67. Five of us shoe-horned
ourselves into Terry Kirkup’s car (with bikes on the roof-rack) and drove
up to Edinburgh to face Bridgend Bats, who had just won the Edinburgh
League Championship. |
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| We disgorged ourselves from the
car – Terry, Frank Auffret, Mike Dobson, Jim Smith and Les Gustafson - to
be met by Jackie Pinkerton, who had agreed in advance to make our numbers
up to six. The match was only three weeks after our trip to Kingstanding
and we had only just got back our bikes after British Rail had sent them
on a roundabout trip back to Tyneside - having collected them from the
Doncaster garage where we’d been forced to abandon them - and we had all
sorts of bike problems in the match. |
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| Jackie Pinkerton rode two races
for us and then obviously decided that we were a lost cause, cycled off
and wasn’t seen again – can’t say we blamed him though. He must have
thought that we were a ramshackle lot. (We pulled ourselves together,
however, for the second match at Davidsons Mains, where we defeated the
Griffins, having lost there a year earlier). |
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| Bridgend were supposed to be the
opponents in the opening home match of 1968 at Temple Park, but they
pulled out at the last minute. They had been scheduled to race matches
against Trow Lea and a fledgling Middlesbrough side, so these two teams
raced each other instead. The report of match appears below, and the
repeat encounter later in the season is covered in the Middlesbrough
section of this site. |
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| Tyneside Test Match
Of
1968 |
Below are some before-and-after photographs from the legendary
1968 test |
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| Heat 5 Norman Carson flies off
Gate 4, to attack Mike Dobson on the first bend, and the second photo
shows him leading into the 3rd bend - but Mike obviously
manages to regain the lead before the end of the heat, as he crosses the
line in first place. Behind them, Les Gustafson makes a last-bend effort
to go round the outside of Kenny Kerr, who drifts him out so wide that he
has to take evasive action as they cross the line, to avoid colliding with
George Grant’s solid starting gate, and in so doing runs over the legs of
two spectators lying by the side of the track (but at least avoids a
repeat of the incident in the 1949 Newcastle v Edinburgh match, where home
rider Alex Temple rode into the starting gate and broke a toe). |
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| Heat 13 Mike Dobson off Gate 1
reaches the first bend in front and starts to ease Gess Atkinson and Keith
Dyer away from the inside line. His lurking team-mate Les Gustafson takes
the opportunity to come through the gap into the lead, and Shields enter
lap two in a 5-1 position and hold it for the rest of the heat (the only
one of the match). Mike Dobson is so far unbeaten by an opponent.
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| (Norman got his revenge in heat
17, when he became the only Newcastle rider on the day to head home Mike
Dobson, bringing Newcastle to within two points of Shields and setting up
the dramatic last-heat decider. The single photograph of the heat shows
that Mike had again made the gate, but Norman was all over him and
eventually got past, and this time held on to the lead until the chequered
flag). |
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| Heat 17 was a mini-drama in itself, apart
from Norman being as close to Mike Dobson’s bike as it was possible to be
without riding pillion. Les Gustafson had withdrawn himself from heat 16
and brought in tactical reserve Jim Smith, and then withdrew Mike Noutch
from heat 17 to give Jim another outing. The photograph shows Newcastle’s
Keith Dyer at the rear sitting up – the match programme has him as being
excluded, but none of us can remember the reason – so all Jim had to do
was stay on his bike for the rest of the race. Unfortunately, he managed
to fall off and didn’t remount, so there were only two finishers to the
heat, one of several races where points were dropped due to non-finishes. |
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| First Bend Tangle |
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| Courtesy of Les Gustafson |
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| Les says: "Tangle at the first bend of
Heat 8 Gess Atkinson emerges in the lead while an
almost-invisible Keith Dyer in white clashes with Eddie Murray and
Jim Graham. The resulting 4-2 is the home side's first heat win of
the match." |
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| Two photographs from the visit to Edinburgh in October
1966. In the first one, all four riders round the
fourth (pits) bend at Pilrig Park track (the wall on which PITS is
painted is the rear of the chocolate factory). The other
photo is of riders at the starting gate at Davidsons Mains |
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| Cycle Speedway Gazette |
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| NACSA Badge |
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| John Skinner says: My thank you to Les
for all of this under the "Your Memories" heading. If you
have memories of Tyneside Cycle Speedway please get in touch with
me
John |
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