The NL showed there was plenty of life in the old dog by staging a three meeting test series against the Soviet Union at Wembley, Belle Vue and Coventry. A crowd of close to 30000 turned up at Wembley to see Britain run out comfortable 73-35 victors, in a meeting marred by the serious injuries sustained by the visitors Vitaly Shilo. The second test at Coventry was far closer, with Britain coming from eight points behind to clinch the meeting over the final heats. The third test at Belle Vue was another landslide win for Britain although by that time the Russians were beginning to flag as they had also ridden in various meetings at Oxford, Swindon and Norwich, the latter meeting seeing the local Stars ride against a four man Russian team over eighteen heats!

To further rub it in, the NL hosted a tour from Vargarna hard on the heels of the Soviet visit, but it must be said it was a decidedly lesser affair, with Knutsson, Nygren, Sjosten and Bengt Jansson already riding for British teams.

Metropolitan League

While the formation of the Metropolitan League didn’t exactly grab the headlines, it was an important breakthrough for the PL. There were now two leagues riding “black”, and more importantly, it provided a path for junior riders into speedway and would ensure newcomers were streamed into the PL sphere. The teams taking part were Rayleigh, Ipswich, Weymouth, Eastbourne and Newpoole, a composite team using Newport and Poole juniors. In contrast the NL could only offer outings at Rye House, where somewhat ironically the “blacked” Tommy Sweetman donated a trophy bearing his name for an individual event in the middle of August!

The World Championship

At the beginning of July, Frank Varey, the Sheffield promoter declared in his programme notes that there was a strong possibility that “there will be a settlement with the ACU within the next few weeks”, that being the case, it would still have been possible for PL riders to take part in World Championship qualifying rounds. However, it would have needed a revamping of the PL fixtures as the PLRC rounds were scheduled to take place after the NL qualifiers. In the event, it didn’t happen.

After each NL track had staged a qualifying round, the top sixteen scorers met at Wembley in the British Final in front of another huge crowd of 32000. Barry Briggs headed the eight qualifiers who progressed to the World Final in Sweden, one of whom being Bob Andrews!