Doug Nicolson looks at the Open Licence seasons of the 60s.

1960

Southern Area League teams Aldershot, Eastbourne and Rye House were all refused Provincial League licences by the SCB, the latter two because of their Sunday afternoon raceday while the board did not believe the Shots crowds in 1959 would support them in the PL. Appeals by both Sunday tracks were unsuccessful and all three staged limited open meetings. Reg Fearman would later remark that their refusal was “criminal” and felt that had the PL promoters been more experienced they would have fought this decision. While Eastbourne and Rye House would continue with junior meetings throughout the 60s, Aldershot folded with the stadium concentrating on stock cars.

Exeter and Plymouth both staged a few late season meetings which were a precursor to joining the PL in 1961, although Plymouth’s elevation was down to Bristol being made homeless when their Knowle stadium was sold for redevelopment and they moved lock, stock and barrel to Pennycross.

St Austell continued running open licence events and a bit like Plymouth would gain PL status by taking over from a closed track, in this case Neath whose licence was transferred for 1963.

 

Bradford

Undaunted by a desperate year at Odsal, promoter Halliday made plans to move his Panthers across the city to the Greenfield Stadium for 1961. Although the PL fixtures started at the beginning of April, construction wasn’t due to start until mid June with racing planned to commence about four weeks later. Bad weather and flooding further delayed the work and in the meantime the Bradford riders had been loaned out to Middlesbrough and Newcastle but they returned to ride in a series of challenge meetings when work was completed in early August. There was no happy ending for Halliday however as his team had a tough time in 1962 and crowds fell to such an extent that Northern Promotions came in to rescue the promotion and see the season out.

 

Shelbourne

Globetrotting Trevor Redmond remembered meetings in Dublin on Sundays in the early 50s and decided to give the Emerald Isle another go in 1961 with a mixture of NL and PL level meetings, using all his powers of persuasion in getting riders to make the long trip through the night, particularly Wayne Briggs who was riding at Edinburgh the night before. Sheffield, Stoke and Wolverhampton were among the PL visitors while Belle Vue provided opposition from the higher tier. Ex Wimbledon Don Dom Perry came out of retirement and turned in some fine scores while locals Alan Marr and Ginger O’Bierne also got outings. No doubt fun times but with Redmond promoting at both Neath and St Austell in 1962 he probably didn’t have the time to continue in Ireland.

Fleeting attempts were made at Belfast (Dunmore Park) and Dublin’s Santry in 1968 before the political unrest ended thoughts of promoting in Ireland.

 

Leicester

Charles Ochiltree closed Leicester at the end of 1961 but persuaded Mike Parker that, while Leicester wasn’t a viable NL venue despite crowds of around 3000, it would thrive in the PL as the crowd level would hold up. Aye right! If he believed this why didn’t he run at Blackbird Road or was the PL beneath him. Parker rarely achieved half of this figure in a disastrous season.  Ochiltree had one last try, running a handful of meetings on a Friday night in 1963 before accepting he was flogging a dead horse.

 

BL poor deals

The NL/PL split of 1964 meant that only Rye House ran licenced non league meetings, while the PL promoters went the whole hog in attempting to form a second tier, the Metropolitan League, but really it was before its time. With the conflict resolved the BL again looked at non league tracks and, unlike Cowdenbeath and Kings Lynn who had “development” status,giving them a free hand in booking riders, limited Ipswich, Middlesbrough and Rayleigh to second strings and juniors. This ruling wasn’t strictly adhered to with both Middlesbrough and Ipswich booking entire BL teams for their early meetings. This irked Charles Ochiltree, always one to look after his own interests He wasn’t in favour of these tracks being allowed to book star names, and had previously looked for a fee for his riders to ride elsewhere. He wanted these tracks to agree to run a training session for every meeting they held. This didn’t seem to be a problem but pay rates were a bone of contention. The tracks were prepared to pay BL rates but only if BL heatleaders were allowed to race and this impasse eventually led to all three tracks giving up on the season.

Weymouth was the only track to espouse a completely junior set up with no BL riders at all, but their opening meeting, the Wessex Championship, drew a very small crowd and their promoter George Bargery, concluding that future meetings were unviable, cancelled their licence.     

 

Cowdenbeath

When the Forth Road Bridge was opened in 1964, it greatly improved the road links between Edinburgh and Johnnie Hoskins shrewdly agreed a deal with Cowdenbeath FC to stage speedway at their Central Park stadium in 1965. While they were never likely to gain league membership, being classed as a “development track”, meant they had no restrictions on whom they could book for their meetings.

A good crowd attended the opening meeting against the Colonial Tigers, with Bluey Scott the only recognised BL heat leader in the meeting although George Hunter and Doug Templeton had a match race in the second half. Newcastle and Halifax followed in quick succession, with both teams watering down their line ups. Diamonds were without Brian Brett and Brian Craven, while Dukes’ Eric Boothroyd didn’t come north. A preliminary World Championship Qualifying Round followed, featuring BL tracks number 6 and 7s, a meeting in which Fife Lion Ross Nickisson proved he could compete at that level.

Sadly that was as good as it got. They had now run out of visiting teams prepared to come north on a Wednesday, something that had previously beset Motherwell in 1958. There was nothing for it but to mix and match sides from the Scottish based riders and a few more meetings were run but to ever decreasing crowd numbers and it was no surprise when the venture folded in July.

The Scottish Junior Championship was contested by 16 juniors, highlighting how many were available and the promotion reckoned they could have formed four teams from them. Perhaps if they had gone down the junior route and if Sunday meetings, a political hot potato in Presbyterian Scotland at the time, had been sanctioned things could have been different.

 

Kings Lynn

Kings Lynn were also granted development status and, despite racing on Saturday nights when up to 14 British League tracks could be racing, managed to run a full season of challenge meetings though the composition of their Stars side was decidedly variable. In all close to twenty meetings were staged by the heirs apparent to Norwich and indeed they used the old race jackets from The Firs too. A wide range of guest  riders were used with Ronnie Genz, Bob Andrews and Colin Pratt featuring prominently though Glasgow pair Charlie Monk and Graham Coombes also donned the Star a couple of times.

On the back of this successful season the Stars got a place in the BL in 1966 and were allocated an impressive heat leader trio in Terry Betts, Peter Moore and David Crane, the first two being on the long term injured list the previous year. Their back up riders  featured Howdy Byford, Stan Stevens, Ken Adams and Cyril Crane. Not world beaters but they finished sixteenth in a nineteen strong league on their debut year in 1966 and nearly 60 years on are still tracking.

 

Brafield

Brafield had previously operated in the SAL in the mid 50s, with a young Colin Goody being among their riders. Entrepreneur John La Trobe who had other commercial interests including “Radio 390”, a pirate radio station, brought speedway back in August 1966, with Ted Spittles bringing experience to an otherwise inexperienced team made up of Long Eaton juniors Pete Wrathall and Ian Champion, Oxford juniors Pete Seaton and Wayne Barry and Hungarian exile Laslo Munkasci. A handful of meetings were run but tellingly the crowds were far less than for the stockcars. It was true junior racing. The following year was much of the same with  challenge matches more or less fortnightly against the junior sides from King’s Lynn, Coventry, Wolves and Hackney. Crowds were never great but the Badgers were let down by a lack of publicity in the Speedway Star. They got the bare minimum of a match report and nothing else. Visiting fans had to be keen and vigilant to find out in advance when their junior team was going to be at The Green. The match report for the Hackney meeting contained the fateful last paragraph

“This is the last speedway meeting at Brafield as speedway has been suspended until further notice owing to lack of support”

La Trobe’s appeal to be allowed to book stronger fields for his meetings fell on deaf ears and he received no support from the BSPA. He was by now heavily involved in court actions over his pirate radio activities and the Badgers were culled along with the radio pirates.

 

Nelson

Mike Parker had secured the Seedhill Road stadium in Nelsonin 1967 ran speedway and stockcars on alternate weeks there. After a composite Cavalcade of Sport event, featuring both speedway and stockcars – shades of 1959 revisited, he staged The Olympiad individual won by Goog Allan (Newcastle) from a field that also contained Jim McMillan and Brian Whaley (Glasgow) John Bishop (Oxford) John Dews (Sheffield) and Cyril Francis (Wolves) as well as little known riders like Dennis Wasden, Dave Beacon, Laslo Munkasci, Stuart Riley and Grieves Davidson.

The track was described as being unusually square, virtually having four straights and neither the shape nor the surface ever met with universal approval, while the safety fence wasn’t highly rated either, but there were promises that these problems would be remedied over the winter. It was perhaps fortunate that stockcars were run on alternate weeks. Their far larger crowds, in some instances nearly ten times more than the speedway, financed the operation. Had speedway ran weekly without them it’s entirely possible that the crowds may have fallen to such an extent that the project would have been abandoned…… and the second division may never have been formed. For once, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the stocks!