Doug Nicolson was always a bit embarrassed at the way non Scots were included in Scottish international sides but on reflection he feels that other sides were almost as bad as he looks at

 

Speedway’s Dual Nationals

 

Land of My Fathers

Your nationality is normally determined by the country of your birth, though countries, including the UK, which recognise the concept of dual nationality will also accept you as a citizen of your father’s country, should it differ from your own. Consequently you can be eligible to represent either country.

 

When Did It Start

Unsurprisingly Johnnie Hoskins was probably the first to be aware of the possibilities that dual nationality offered. He had persuaded Harry Lauder to be a guest at Glasgow’s White City in 1938 when Americans Wilbur Lamoreaux and Jack and Cordy Milne were riding. Sitting beside Milne’s father in the stand, Lauder found out that he came from Aberdeen, and subsequently told the crowd this when presenting a trophy to Milne, adding that this made Milne a Scot! This seems to be the start of it.

Ron Johnson really was born in Duntocher, about a dozen miles from Glasgow and, despite having ridden for Australia in pre war test matches, turned out for Scotland in some early post war internationals, often being the only bona fide Scot in the team, before the Control Board ruled that he was first and foremost an Australian.  While true Scots like Gordon McGregor, Ken McKinlay, Tommy Miller and Willie Wilson made the international side, Scotland still relied heavily on “imports”

Trevor Redmond made the first attempt to “adopt” Monk, writing in the programme of Neath’s opening meeting he said “Several names were suggested (for the Neath team) including the Neath Abbey Monks which makes me think of Australia. In the second half of tonight’s programme we have Charlie Monk from Adelaide. When we enquired why Charlie chose to race in Wales we discovered his relations come from this area and he thinks his name is associated with the Abbey”. Aye right! So it had nothing to do with Poole being too strong a team to break into. When Monk came to Scotland, we were soon told that his father hailed from Dundee – a claim unchallenged and indeed unproven to this day – making him eligible to ride for Scotland.

However it has to be said that during the year when the Provincial League rode “black” and a number of nationality rules went out the window.

 

Scots Who Were Not

Prior to the big split in 1964, the PL had few international meetings, really just Britain v Overseas test matches. The Control Board seemed reluctant to let Edinburgh stage a Scotland meeting but they were permitted to have a meeting featuring “TheScots v The Rest”. However things changed in 1964, when the PL was riding “black”, and it was a case of anything goes.  Trevor Redmond, Wayne Briggs, Maury Mattingley, Chris Julian and Bruce Ovenden all donned the dark blue jersey of Scotland. Aussies Bluey Scott, Jim Airey and Gordon Guasco all turned out for New Zealand in test matches at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle. A four team tournament between Scotland, England, Wales and Overseas broke just about every convention. For a start the Wales quartet had no Welshmen, add to this Vic White, Geoff Penniket and Les McGillivray rode for Scotland at Newport, while Howdy Byford was deemed Scottish at Exeter! When order was restored that winter it was ruled that nationality criteria would be strictly applied, ruling Mattingley out of the running for a Scottish place but this resolve didn’t last long. Both Bluey Scott and Colin McKee subsequently rode for Scotland – and in high profile test matches against Russia. Mattingley’s time in “exile” didn’t last long either and he returned to the Scottish side in 1967, albeit for just one meeting.  

Later Norwegians Oyvind Berg and Reidar Eide and Swede Bernie Persson would turn out for “Scotland” but incongruously, although the 1972 side had seven Scots born riders and Charlie Monk in their lineup, this was the only time they were required to call the side a “Scotland Select”!

 

Football League

While it’s easy to be critical of the promoters for allowing double standards and dual nationalities, it should maybe be viewed in the context of the time. In football, with internationals generally limited to the Home International events, there were also inter league games, which also involved the Italians and Danes.  The Scottish League v the Football League games were rated only marginally below the full international fixture in terms of importance and crowd appeal. League teams were selected from all eligible players, with Scotsman Dave Mackay famously turning out for the Football League against Scotland, and Dennis Law playing both for and against the Italian League in games with the Football League – and him a full blown Scottish internationalist at the time too! Their selection greatly added to spectator interest in these games. Against this backdrop, it’s may be not so surprising speedway adopted the “league” approach too, with Barry Briggs, Ronnie Moore and later Ivan Mauger lining up in Great Britain’s colours.

Similarly in cricket where Mike Denness turned out for both his native Scotland and also England for whom he captained for a spell.

 

 

Naturalisation

This allows foreign nationals to become a British citizen through marriage or having lived in the country for five years.

In the early Sixties, Real Madrid won the first five European Cup titles, thanks in no small part to Fernec Puskas and Alfred di Stefano. Puskas was a Hungarian, who played for the national side between 1945 and 1956 before fleeing to Spain after the Hungarian Revolution and was subsequently capped for his adopted country, Di Stefano played for no less than three international sides – Argentina in 1947, Columbia between 1949 and 1952 and Spain from 1957. Both these players had become naturalized Spaniards.

Hungarian Sandor Levai and Pole Tad Teodorowicz both became Brits through this route too. So perhaps speedway wasn’t too different. Levai was capped for England against Sweden while Teo rode in a couple of British finals. They were speedway’s equivalent of Puskas and di Stefano.

Dutchman Piet van de Berg didn’t look like he would be allowed to ride in Britain in the mid 50s. However when it was discovered he also had an Australian passport in the name of Peter Vandenberg, there was no problem, and,  quite some time later, he was selected to ride for Britain against Russia.

 

Who Made Britain Great?

Test series were pretty thin on the ground in the 60s with the World Team Cup being the principal tournament. However GB, even with Barry Briggs and Ronnie Moore in the team, never managed better than distant runners up. It has been suggested that some reports referred to the team as the “British Commonwealth”. Things changed when they managed to win the title in 1968 at Wembley, with Barry Briggs and Ivan Mauger in the side. Similarly, the test series against the Soviet Union and the Swedes had Barry Briggs, Ivan Mauger, Charlie Monk, Jim Airey and Peter Vandenberg wearing the Union Jack. Ronnie Moore would later join them. GB’s historic World Team Cup win in Wroclaw in 1971 may have been achieved with Ray “World Cup Willie” Wilson leading the way with a faultless maximum but he was the only true Brit in the squad which was completed by Briggs, Mauger, Airey and Moore. This trend continued in the Great Britain v Poland test series with the sixth test at Belle Vue seeing the home side track no fewer than five Australasians in their octet – Ivan Mauger, Ronnie Moore, Jim Airey, Garry  Middleton and Bruce Cribb – with only Jim McMillan, Trevor Hedge and Dave Hemus being true Brits.

GB retained their World Team title the following year with John Louis and Terry Betts having replaced Briggs and Airey in the team and in 1973, with the emerging talents of Dave Jessup and Peter Collins coming to the fore, the BSPA made the brave decision to enter an England team. Not only did they enter, but they won the title in Katowice, beginning the start of a golden era, and one in which more attention was paid to true nationalities.

 

Ex-Pat’s New Nationality

Bob Andrews looked like ringing down a storied career when he sailed off to New Zealand at the end of the 1965 season. He had not only been a British Finalist throughout the sixties but had ridden in three World Finals, finishing fifth on two occasions. Controversially he had tried to ride in both the Provincial League and National League during the “big split” of 1964 but a court injunction stopped him from riding for Wolverhampton in the PL. However it was no great surprise that he joined the Monmore Green side for what seemed to be a last hurrah the following year. Settling in New Zealand he took out Kiwi nationality. In his inimitable style, he recalls needing to remove half his brain to be accepted! In 1968 Cradley persuaded him to return to the UK and he duly stayed for five seasons during which time he won 27 New Zealand caps, to go with 21 England and 12 GB ones from his earlier days, with his crowning glory winning the World Pairs title in 1969.

Tommy Sweetman was another Kiwi-Brit. Having ridden for both Britain and England in the 60s in the UK, he emigrated to New Zealand at the start of the 70s and continued riding there for about four seasons, during which he donned the NZ racejacket for the second test against USA in Auckland in March 1972, partnering Ivan Mauger and scoring seven paid nine in a 66-42 win for his new country.

Bill Landels, who gained a handful of Scottish caps during his time at Edinburgh’s Old Meadowbank stadium was another to emigrate to the southern hemisphere and subsequently get called up by his new country, being a regular at the Sydney tests for two or three years.

At a decidedly lesser level, Dave Hemus, Malcolm Brown, Alex Hughson and Roni Ferguson were all resident in Rhodesia and duly turned out for the national side in “mini matches” against South Africa at different times in the first half of the 1970s decade. The former had received a GB cap against Poland in 1971. It is not known whether any of the quartet actually went through the naturalization process.

 

Split Personality!

World Finalist Howard Cole was born in Cardiff in 1943 although you would be hard pressed to find and reference to him being Welsh in speedway records – although perhaps I’m confusing him with Kid Bodie! A regular winter visitor to both Australia and New Zealand, he became New Zealand champion in 1967 and a couple of years later he had the unusual feat of riding for both New Zealand and England in the same test series where four a side teams raced over eight heats. His first appearance was as a reserve for England at Napier when he scored two points. The next test was at Palmerston, and, with Ivan Mauger and Ronnie Moore missing, although lined up to again be the England reserve, he was drafted into the Kiwi side, finishing up as top scorer with four points. This mirrored previous Scottish experiences when Bruce Ovenden, originally programmed to be the Rest of the World reserve at Glasgow got “transferred” to the Scottish side when Maury Mattingly’s flight north was fog bound.

 

International Transfers

Rhodesia was the scene for other international “transfers” in their very successful inaugural season in early 1971. There were three Rhodesia v South Africa tests with Dave Jessup riding for South Africa in the first, swapping to Rhodesia in the second and missing out completely in the third. Norwegian Oyvind Berg didn’t ride in the first, was a “Rhodesian” in the second, before changing to the Springboks for the final meeting.

In 1976 West Germany was also a fertile ground for international transfers. A four team meeting at Abensberg featured hosts West Germany along with quartets from Czechoslovakia, Australia and “Great Britain (England)”. Strangely the GB side tracked Billy Sanders, while the Aussies had Dane Preben Rosenkilde in their four, Rosenkilde having gained a rare international cap, turning out for his native country in a four team meeting in Landshut the previous year. It’s a bit hard to come up with a reason for these changes. If Australia were considered too strong then it was overdone as they trailed in last some nine points behind third placed West Germany. Sanders meanwhile, while scoring only five, helped GB edge out Czechoslovakia to win the meeting by just one point.

A couple of weeks later it was Pfaffenhofen’s turn to stage a four team tournament. This time it involved New Zealand, Australia, West Germany and Scotland and was considered “unofficial”. For once the Scots tracked four genuine Jocks, while the Aussies had two “imposters” in the shape of Dane Preben Rosenkilde and Englishman Arthur Browning joining the bona fide Garry Middleton and Phil Crump. In circumstances that weren’t explained, both Phil Herne and Neil Street were unavailable and hence the substitutes were brought in to balance up the side – in some ways a bit similar to Scotland unashamedly bringing in Aussie Merv Janke into the side against England at Blantyre, when neither Jim McMillan nor Bobby Beaton were available.

 

One Offs.

Glasgow’s Jimmy Gallacher made a couple of trips to Rhodesia in the early 70s and in the early months of 1973 was called up twice to represent Rhodesia in mini tests against Overseas, perhaps reminiscent of the 1964 mix and match approach to the series involving an Overseas combine.

Mitch Shirra was born in Auckland, New Zealand, which makes it hard to explain how he was called upon to ride for Australia in two tests against Great Britain in Sydney and Liverpool in December 1975. His proudest international moment was scoring ten for the Kiwis historic World Team cup win in 1979.

 

One We Got Right And One We Weren’t Allowed

Paisley’s Tom Davie rode for Scotland against Australasia in 1975 and this is one we got right. He really was born in Aberdeen.

John Boulger’s father was born in Scotland and, when this was known, the Glasgow management made plans to include him in the side against England. However sanity prevailed when the Control Board ruled that he could only turn out for one international side and as he had already ridden for Australia he was ineligible for Scotland. Shades of Ron Johnson about twenty five years earlier.

 

Aussies Born Elsewhere

Dave Gifford was born in Herne Bay in Kent and, although riding for England at Coatbridge had always been considered a Kiwi. Chris and Phil Bass were both born in England as was Mal Mackay but all emigrated as children and the three rode for Australasia in Second division tests in the UK.