Although it was around 450 miles from his Glasgow home, Doug Nicolson explains why he has always had an affinity for Exeter in

 

First night

It was no accident that my brother and I persuaded our parents to go on holiday to Paignton in 1966. My Dad worked in the railways and we had a national timetable book in our bookcase. This showed there was a direct service from the seaside town to Exeter. What we didn’t realise was that St Thomas’s station was just a hop skip and jump away from the County Ground.

It was with some excitement that we entered through the turnstiles. We didn’t really know what to expect. We knew the track was even bigger than Glasgow’s White City and went around the dog track. Photos were in scarce supply and we wrongly assumed that the picture on the front of the Falcons 1964 program was their home track. Later investigation would show that, while Jimmy Squibb was the rider on the cover, he was in fact riding for New Cross at Old Kent Road on a track with a mesh fence. Seeing the huge banked track with the iron sheeted fence really blew us away.

The tapes went up for the first heat and unusually the riders immediately headed out to the fence to get on the best racing line. At both Glasgow and Edinburgh they would dive to the inside line. It certainly was spectacular and making the jump from gate one looked a big ask. Poole’s Ross Gilbertson was asked in the Speedway Post for his favourite gate position and answered “anywhere but gate one at Exeter”. The other story about gate one is that Jimmy Squibb discovered that, although the old concrete gate was still there, there was a spot right next to the grass with no concrete. This was the best place to line up should you be off gate one, but only a few Exeter rides knew about this.

Oh no two in a row

Exeter’s track had a huge home advantage and it was a rare for them to lose at home. We arrived the week after Edinburgh had won 41-37, thanks in no small measure to an eleven point score by Glasgow’s Charlie Monk who was guesting in place of the injured Bengt Jansson. Given our Glasgow allegiance, it was probably a good one to miss. Things didn’t go any better with the Halifax encounter. In fact it was marginally worse, with the final score ending up at 36-41. The lost point came in the pivotal heat five when both Jimmy Squibb and Colin Goody pulled up in front of us with bike problems. There was a shrug of the shoulders as they signalled to each other that they had no hope of getting round. Tommy Sweetman kept the Falcons in the hunt with a fine maximum and a very brave last bend when he was scraped against the fence but kept going to clinch his heat win. Two defeats in a row, almost unheard of in Devon, but in fairness the locals took it in their laid back sporting fashion, that was their trademark.

The Falcons had their own war cry, which made a change from the much used 2-4-6-8 who do we appreciate

1-3-5-7 hear this cry from glorious Devon!

E-X-E-T-E-R  Exeter

Normal service

The Falcons got back on track both literally and figuratively the following week, when Newcastle, with my all time favourite Graham Coombes, were the visitors. The inside edge around the track was really quite high in places, and quite sheer too, as Chris Blewett found to his cost. Chasing Russ Dent, he ran out of room when Dent’s bike failed coming out the second bend and, in taking avoiding action, hit the inside edge square on and got thrown some distance down the track. It looked bad but he got up and dusted himself down and went out and won the rerun. We could see why the Falcons fans loved “Chrissie”. What a character and his Cornish match races against Chris Julian were the stuff of legend. How I would have loved to have seen them. No visit to the County Ground would be complete without going to the track shop, a table heavy with goodies at the side of the main stand. I probably spent the last of my holiday spending money on transfers, key rings and a plastic driving licence holder for my Dad.

Winter pen pal

I got a pen pal in Exeter just as the season was coming to a close, Steve from Pinhoe, on the outskirts of Exeter. He attended St Hele’s school and, unusually, took Russian amongst his subjects. Along with another pupil, he had been invited to the Mayoral reception for the Russians on the day of their visit to Exeter for the West of England v Russia meeting, as they were probably the only people in the city who spoke even a few words of Russian. He helped with some basic translation and had press cuttings of his time spent with the Ruskies on that historic day.

Two more holidays in the south west

With even better planning, the following year’s holiday was to Bournemouth at the same time as Glasgow were at Poole. We were also invited over to Exeter and saw Neil Street win the Jack Unstead Memorial, an annual traditional event that had been staged at the County Ground for the previous five seasons. We went to the Stand and found out why it was so named. You had to stand to see the racing, or to see the home straight to be precise. A few weeks later I was back down, staying with my pen pal and off to see the visiting Red Star Prague. There had been heavy rain but the meeting was saved by a liberal spread of sawdust around the circuit, the same technique being used to effect when the Russians visited two years earlier. One time Edinburgh rider Wayne Briggs was on the comeback trail with the Falcons and had a good night. The Prague riders had pretty unusual goggles which had a black seam down either side and, while it didn’t obscure their vision, it certainly looked odd, a real collector’s item for the kids, who got a pair after the meeting. The next morning we returned to the track as they frequently had a practice session on “the morning after” before grading the track in preparation for the following week. It was surprising the number of second halfers who “pulled a sickie” to come and have a blast round. Possibly this was a normal occurrence, but how often can you go to a grandparents funeral?

Scotland was prominent at the end of the season at Exeter with both Edinburgh and Glasgow taking part in a double header to close out the league fixtures. Unusually  Oyvind Berg and Brian Whaley turned out for both Scottish sides.

1968 saw the advent of the second division and Plymouth becoming the second track in the south west. It also saw our family heading off to Newquay, which allowed us to take in a meeting at both Plymouth and Exeter. The trip back over a foggy Bodmin Moor after the former was certainly atmospheric, while Exeter’s meeting was their much acclaimed Westernapolis event which Eric Boocock won after a run off with Martin Ashby. From a personal point of view I was again disappointed with Ove Fundin, who turned in another poor performance. I was fated never to see him at his best. We also got a rare glimpse of former Falcon Gunnar Malmquist who had been allocated to Glasgow at the start of the season but who had been unable to join them due to business commitments. Now that they had been concluded, the way seemed open to him becoming a Tiger. Shortly after, he declined to sign saying there was too much travelling involved. Some felt he was hanging out for a return to Exeter. It was possibly true. Exeter or Glasgow not a choice you’d want to make.

 

Track record record regained

I always liked that the Falcons programmes in the 60s had a paragraph for you to complete with the details of the fastest time of the night, possibly because it was the fastest track in the country. Although only three yards longer than my beloved White City, still considered by many as Glasgow’s spiritual home, it was about six seconds faster in these days. However it’s may be no coincidence that they dropped this section when Crewe opened. Kings’ Barry Meeks featured in the Guinness Book of Records by recording a speed of 54.62 mph around the 470 yard Earle Street circuit in 1970, a record that stood unchallenged after the track was reduced by 40 yards that winter. It was pleasing to hear that this speed was bettered by Mark Loram when he posted a time of 64.3 seconds in 1996. By my calculations, this was a speed of 55.09 mph, so the County Ground had regained the mantle of “fastest track” well before it closed. The track record record had come home.

 

Work Gets in the Way

By 1969, I was working and it was getting pretty difficult to fit in a trip to my now beloved Exeter, but I managed it although, regrettably, I had to miss the second leg of the Scottish Cup at Coatbridge, the controversial one after which the Tigers vowed to only ride in official meetings there. With nothing about it in the papers, I had to rely on a report from Exeter cycle speedway star Geoff Patman, who I had the pleasure to meet at The Heart of Oak at Pinhoe and  who had been  riding in Scotland that weekend. He told me the Tigers had won by a point on aggregate. Unfortunately it was the reverse – they lost by a point.

On the Bank Holiday Monday, I witnessed another Exeter tradition - a morning meeting starting at 11.30. The Falcons beat Poole and despite the dry track Martin Ashby got very close to the track record first time out. The second half event, four heats, two semi finals and a final, was sponsored by Westward TV who were good friends to the speedway and who showed recorded highlights later that day. Something we missed as we headed down to Pennycross Stadium, the home of the Plymouth Devils, for a pop festival. While a far bigger event was taking place at the Isle of Wight, with Bob Dylan, The Who and Joe Cocker amongst others, the “little brother” was still pretty good with The Move and Fleetwood Mac being the headliners. Just days later, what turned out to be the last league meeting was staged at the stadium. My visit gave me the chance to walk on the track and see that there was only a little sandy surface on top of the concrete track. Not great.

It would be a further four years before I made it back to Devon. Staying at the Middleditch’s Bailie House in Sturminster Marshal – and quite a stay it was, things were never quiet at Bailie House - we drove over for the Westernapolis meeting and also looked in on my pen pal who by this time had forsaken the speedway to become the drummer of Dilendas Vaal, a local group. They were on at the Quay Club and it was rumoured that David Bowie was coming to see them there, and while he never showed, it was still a great night at this storied venue. With work and adult life looking like overtaking my speedway good times I didn’t think I would ever be back at the County Ground. We again encountered some fog on the return journey, notably at Tolpuddle, giving an almost mystical look to the martyrs’ memorial stone.

Work actually helps

By the late 80s my work took me down to Bristol usually for a couple of days at a time. After a couple of near misses I eventually managed to engineer a visit to coincide with the Tigers being at Exeter. By staying at a guest house close to the station, I could get an early train up to Bristol in time for my meeting. I returned to the County Ground some fifteen years after my last visit and really it didn’t look any different, quite timeless in fact. I managed a few more visits in the following years, with the Tigers not only winning there a few times but actually being fancied to win there. Again I have to pay tribute to the local fans for their good grace and good wishes for a safe trip home. Shane Bowes and Robbie Nagy were the Glasgow riders who revelled in these visits to Devon.

My last time…but not Exeter’s

I had been retired for a couple of years when the news broke that 2004 would be Exeter‘s last season at the County Ground and a look at the fixture list showed that Glasgow would be the visitors in the final league meeting there. I resolved to get down for that, even though in recent times the Tigers had put up some woeful performances, like a 74-16 hammering when only guest Scott Swain stood between us and a whitewash. I dug out my air miles folder and found I had enough to get me down to Bristol, just like the old days. As it turned out the Rye House fixture had been rained off earlier in the season and their meeting was the final league match that year, but it didn’t detract from a memorable trip back down memory lane. Incidentally the Rockets lost 75-15. Although it was close to ten years since my last visit, the place again didn’t look much different and a visit to the track shop table saw me buy a commemorative coaster The meeting started on a sombre note with a minute’s silence for Jimmy Squibb, one of the Falcons finest, who passed away a few days earlier. He had been a true servant and incredibly had ridden well into his fifties for Wally Mawdsley, latterly at Canterbury in Division Two. His passing was deeply felt by the older supporters present that night.  We’ll never see his likes again. While the Tigers were never in with a chance of league points, they never the less put up a spirited fight with Georg Stancl leading the way, funny how the Czechs always liked Exeter. It was a good night and for me a fitting way to remember the place. The winter brought some good news for Falcons fans, giving them a stay of execution and another season. Sadly this time I wasn’t able to get down but I’ll always have the warmest of memories of my time there.

 

Should the Falcons ever find a new nest, I would go and look out my airmiles folder again! Hell I’d be happy to pay full price for the flight!