The upcoming Bank Holiday will be a busy one for the Sittingbourne based Kent CTA Fire Kings Speedway squad.
They will be taking to the track three times in four days as there season really gets going for all the boys in the Kings squad.
First up on Friday evening (May 2nd) comes a visit to the current League pace-setters, the Coventry Storm. The Storm are based at the famous stadium in Brandon on the outskirts of the West Midlands city which gives them their name and have been living up to their moniker by taking the National League by storm thus far, including wins at home over reigning champions and local rivals, Dudley and away at highly-fancied Mildenhall.
All this after a difficult start to the campaign off-track, with troubles over circuit preparation and real question marks being raised over the future of the stadium, which has (uniquely) been staging Speedway racing since the year the dirt track motorcycling discipline debuted here in the UK in 1928.
The Storm like the CTA Fire Kings retain a solid core of their NL debuting side of last term but have clearly strengthened with two significant new additions. Back from last year, when the Storm defeated Kent at Brandon in June by 59 points to 33 are the top heat-leader duo of one-time GB Youth championship runner-up James Sarjeant and the popular Oli Greenwood.
Oliver is joined this year by name-sake, Dan Greenwood – a rider who has in the past gone one better than Sarjeant by marching off with the GB Under 15s title.
The jewel in the crown though is a double-GB champ at Under 19-level in Stefan Nielsen – the Danish-born Brit representing surely a likely major challenge in this meeting to the Kings’ skipper Simon Lambert’s tenure as Bronze Helmet holder. 
The side is completed by their trio of NL debutants of last year, now becoming well-established in the division: grasstracking champion, James Shanes, the long-travelling Cornishman Martin Knuckey and Hammersmith-born, cousin of Chelsea footballing legend John Terry: Ryan Terry-Daley.
From the West Midlands on Friday, it’s a relatively short hop further into the north-west the following day, with a long-awaited return trip to the Newcastle-under-Lyme home of the Stoke Potters. The CTA Fire Kings had been due to finish their NL campaign last term with an away trip to the Potteries knowing a win would have lifted Kent one position further up the table above rivals Buxton.
With the Potters ensconced in the wooden spoon position that seemed a realistic target, but sadly the autumnal weather intervened and the match was never staged. Ironically neither has any other Speedway to date been staged at the troubled Loomer Road circuit since, as Stoke has had a nightmare start to 2014 with further weather and track preparation difficulties.
There’s no doubt though that once they do get started, the Potters represent a significantly improved challenge than their hapless 2013 predecessors.
The experienced Yorkshireman Ben Wilson is the highest ranked in terms of starting averages in the division and the Kent public have already had a taste of what the former Sheffield Tiger can do when he guested for the King’s Lynn Young Stars at Central Park on Easter Monday.
Jon Armstrong is the most experienced rider in the division and is like the Kings’ Benji Compton and David Mason, a former League Riders Champion at this level. One of the most impressive heat leader trios in the division is completed by Ben Hopwood, the one-time Hackney Hawk having joined up from the now defunct Isle of Wight.
The side is completed by four lower graded riders with former King’s Lynn man Chris Widman joined by three comparative rookies in Le Payne, Rob Shuttleworth and James McBain.
Picture supplied by http://www.psp-images.co.uk/