Boats

It was the norm for riders to sail to and from Australia and New Zealand during the close season, such that the SCB laid down that a maximum payment of £250 for these trips. Barry Briggs on returning to New Zealand after winning the 1958 World Final was looking for the full cost of £280 but promoter Ronnie Greene was standing firm at the prescribed figure. Neither would budge as a matter of principle and Briggo looked like missing out on the 1959 season. However with the World Final looming, the SCB felt that, should Ove Fundin take the title, the Swedes would have a strong case for staging the 1960 final. Initially they offered to seed Briggo to the final, but he turned this down pointing out that he was unlikely to recoup the cost of flying back in the remaining weeks of the season. The SCB then offered to pay for his flights. While it didn’t quite work out as Briggo finished third, beating Olle Nygren and Aub Lawson in a runoff, but Ronnie Moore took the title with Fundin second, and the 1960 final remained at Wembley. However it was just a stay of execution, with Fundin taking the title in 1960 and the final going to Sweden the following year.

Charlie Monk was known for being “careful” with his spending but his first trip over from Australia ahead of the 1962 season saw him push the boat out – sorry! – and lash out for one bottle of coca cola during the entire voyage.

Speedway was staged in Dublin in the 50s, with riders getting the night train from London to Holyhead and then getting the morning sailing to Ireland. Norwegians generally took the boat to get to the UK. Reidar Eide, Jonny Faafeng, Oyvind Berg and Sven Svenrud all sailed in for the 1967 season, but the immigration officials refused to let the latter into the UK, and he returned home never to be heard of again. Faafeng had an unnerving experience when returning home for the Norwegian Championship the year before. A passenger was reported to have fallen overboard and after nine hours searching the boat was required to return to Newcastle.

 

Let’s fly high in the sky

Trevor Redmond was a pioneer in arranging weekend flights to the continent when taking parties over for Sunday racing. Some of the flights were in planes of dubious air worthiness and some of the paperwork was possibly less than complete, judging by the stories Barry Briggs recalls in his autobiography “Briggo”. Not all riders are great air passengers and Redmond had his moments, on one trip being the first to get out of a small plane and rushing round to the far side to be sick, before heading back to meet the dignitaries there to welcome the party.

When he reopened Glasgow’s White City, he started the trend of riders flying within the UK to a meeting. Skipper Maury Mattingley flew up from London to Glasgow airport, only a few miles from the track. Joe Hicks was a godsend being the guy who picked him up and dropped him off for the return flight. Maury became well known to flight crew, both for his late arrival and for the wide range of hand luggage he brought with him – engine parts, frame and forks at different times. Joe Hicks recalls his free taxi service “When Glasgow were at Edinburgh the after match dash to Glasgow Airport was hair raising to say the least. The last flight to London was just late enough to make. The Flight Captain would check for the Redmond and Mattingley names on the passenger list, if they were there, he would hold the flight for their arrival. Many times we laid rubber to the Terminal front just to see him sitting smoking waiting out front while everyone else was on the plane ready to go. Never got paid for them either.
Colin McKee was another when he rode for Edinburgh, “could you take me to Glasgow for the last flight?”

Mattingley missed a few meetings for Tigers with reports of plane delays, missing his flight and being fog bound being offered as explanations, though it is possible he was on standby tickets which didn’t guarantee a seat on a given flight. Almost without exception they led to a Tigers home defeat.

Fellow Tiger Chris Julian famously drove to Glasgow from his Redruth home in Cornwall each week, often breaking the journey at Cradley’s Dudley Wood stadium car park where he slept in his van, using a cardboard box to give a separate sleeping area beside his bike. On coming back after a serious head injury in August, it is believed that he too got to fly north.

Tommy Roper was an Edinburgh signing target that year but his request to fly was rejected although this may have just been a ploy to allow him to join Halifax in a swap deal for Alfred Sitzwohl, one of the most one sided swaps ever!

Redmond arranged the flights for the GB team taking part in the World Team Cup in Kempten in West Germany on the first Sunday in September.  He persuaded the Glasgow Supporters Club to pay for some spare seats to allow Tigers riders who had passports to fly out to watch the meeting, the Tigers having ridden at Wimbledon on the Saturday night. Bruce Ovenden was one who took advantage of this “freebie”, and he remembers the rickety plane and, when helping Charlie Monk to recline his seat, it coming away from its floor moorings. It is believed this plane, or a similar one crashed a few weeks later.

Charlie Monk had booked on an Edinburgh to Heathrow flight in late October en route to returning to Australia for the winter but fortunately changed his plans. The flight crashed on the runway, killing all on board, the worst disaster to befall any flight from Scotland. Eric Boocock wasn’t the most enthusiastic of flyers. His trip out to Poland for the 1968 European Final in Warsaw. The small fourteen seater plane had to make a rapid descent when landing and this affected him badly. He reckoned his head was exploding. Despite this he made it to practice but collapsed in the changing room afterwards. Having been told some horror stories of Polish hospitals, he didn’t want to worsen things by riding and accepted the medical advice not to ride. He often felt dizzy in the days after having flown to or from Australia and on one occasion it was nearly two weeks before it cleared.

Barry Briggs flight into Glasgow where he was riding for GB against Sweden was delayed such that he missed his first three rides and had the galling experience of actually flying over Hampden with the meeting in progress.

Perhaps the most unusual, unplanned flight to get to a meeting was undertaken by Coventry’s Jim Lightfoot and Johnny Reason who had intended to take the train for their away meeting at Motherwell but missed the train at Birmingham and promptly headed to the airport. The only way they could make it in time was to fly via Belfast to Glasgow. Incredible, and no doubt costly, dedication for a meeting between two teams in the lower half of the league table. Wimbledon’s Cyril Maidment and Dom Perry were another pair to have their initial travel plans to get to Motherwell thwarted. This time they were snared up in London traffic and feeling they were unlikely to get to Lanarkshire in time, they too flew to Glasgow, an expensive journey as the pair only scored three points between them …and for a challenge meeting too.

 

“Green” Tigers debuts

Maury Mattingley’s first flight north saw him sitting beside a cigar smoking fellow passenger and, with no restrictions on smoking in these days, he was decidedly “green” when he got off. Still it had little effect on him that night, scoring paid eleven and setting up the new track record in the first heat. Ake Andersson was another debutant who was feeling travel sick at his first meeting, having had a rough sea crossing just hours earlier. While he too won his first ride, his latter rides were less productive, and thereafter his career never really took off with the Tigers.

 

Buses too

It probably seemed a good idea for Edinburgh to go on a summer tour down south to Exeter, St Austell, Poole and Plymouth in 1961, getting these fixtures out the way in one fell swoop, but the night after Plymouth the Monarchs were facing Poole in Edinburgh, a mere five hundred miles away, the longest journey in British speedway. However the team were to be driven back on a bus and by leaving immediately after the meeting they would pass straight through the notorious Bristol bottle neck in the early hours of the morning, although there would be other traffic blackspots further north to be dealt with thereafter. Their bus duly pulled into Old Meadowbank just after 5pm, leaving just two hours to freshen up and get prepared for their tough encounter with the Pirates. The Monarchs made a fair fist of it and got a 39-39 draw despite conceding a 5-1 in the final race, but their bus trip was never tried again.

Wimbledon booked a bus to bring their riders north for their rearranged BL meeting at Glasgow in 1968 with Olle Nygren, travelling independently. As their coach was held up due to an accident on the A74, the Glasgow promotion ran some second half heats first with the Wimbledon top scorers’ race and the trophy final being deferred until after the league meeting. The Dons riders changed into their leathers en route and were ready to race on their arrival but despite being at The White City in good time, Nygren would have been the last to be ready as his leathers were on the coach. To avoid further delay, heat two was run before heat one, in which Nygren is programmed. Glasgow promoter Les Whaley deserved full marks for his ingenuity and time management.

Glasgow riders took the supporters club bus to an away meeting during Tigers time at Hampden, with the riders getting a double seat in the hope of getting a better sleep. Later at Blantyre, Tigers used Beaton’s buses to take riders to away meetings, a cost saving measure that made a huge contribution in keeping the club going during some really tough financial times.   

 

….. and also by motorbike

Maury Mattingley signed for Plymouth in 1961 and his wife Rosita, a keen motorcyclist herself, accompanied him to most home meetings. However if she couldn’t get the afternoon off travel with him to Devon, she would ride down on her motorbike, with them reversing roles for the journey home. Bert Harkins was another to use this form of transport in his early days, taking his bike to Edinburgh in the hope of getting some after the meeting laps in his sidecar combination.