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WHERE'S VESPRINI?: THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS PART 3
Saturday November 23, 2013
God bless Tim Berners Lee and his wonderful invention because without it I’d have had no chance of keeping in touch with events in Hoddesdon from the other side of the Atlantic.
For some strange reason Americans think speedway consists of cars with wide tyres zooming round an oval circuit. Never seen the point of that personally but each to their own I guess. Anyway during my time in North America I missed the home draw with Ipswich and the annual visit of Berwick. I’m sure the Bandits must think its something personal by now as more often than not their visit seems to coincide with the annual Hill holiday and this year was no exception. Thankfully I was back for the real business, well in body anyway as after seven hours on a plane and a five hour time difference the mind was definitely wandering a bit. Sometimes in speedway you take a step back and exclaim “WHAT!†at a very loud volume, or is it just me? The League Champions followed by a cup Semi Final was one of those occasions. Why couldn’t we run the cup tie first, why was it a double header in the first place and what time was it again were all questions going through my head. But in the words of Billy Ocean “when the going gets tough the tough get going†and our lads did just that. The Scorpions had their sting removed and the Bears turned out to be more Paddington than Grisly and hey we had a Cup Final to look forward to for the first time in eight years. At that stage the fact the opponents would be Edinburgh or Somerset hadn’t really sunk in which was probably just as well.
In truth it was a funny old meeting with Pontus ruled out after a heavy knock against Scunthorpe and Redcar losing their first choice of guest Thomas Jorgensen forcing them to quickly borrow Ashley Birks instead. Can you imagine that happening in any other sport? a discussion for another time perhaps. Back on the track the home draw against Workington was a sign of what was to come because suddenly our lads had lost the ability to win on their own track. Five heat winners out of 15 was a pretty poor show with only Anders and Pontus getting into double figures and things weren't looking too rosy for the big meetings to come. It was good to see Pontus recover from that heavy fall in the Scunthorpe meeting which produced another of the quotes of the season from the skipper. After our Swedish flyer had landed squarely on his coccyx Jason B quipped “ I thought there was a problem with Pontus as I’m sure he was a couple of inches shorter walking back to the pits!†As they say, there’s no answer to that.....( to be continued)
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