Two enforced team changes affect the Kent SLYDE Kings septet as they attempt to overturn a four point deficit from the first leg when they visit Arlington Raceway on Friday to take on local rivals Eastbourne in the Travel Plus National League Play Off semi-final.
With Glasgow Tigers riding away at Edinburgh (albeit in a ‘dead rubber’ Premier League [PL] match) the Kent club find themselves victims of Speedway’s rules which insist on Danny Ayres (who shares riding duties between his heat leader role at Central Park and the reserve berth at the PL play-off qualifying side north of the border) having to ride regardless for the higher division side. This is especially frustrating as the PL fixture in question is a rearrangement after an earlier rain off, is well past the PL deadline which pitched both Scottish sides into the Play-offs and where their destinies are already being decided away from the league table; and of course normally a trip to Eastbourne would not be on a Friday evening.
But all of these frustrations aside, the reality is that the talismanic Ayres will be several hundred miles north of the Sussex coast on Friday night; and coming in as a ‘Guest’ to cover for his absence is Ben Hopwood.
But all of these frustrations aside, the reality is that the talismanic Ayres will be several hundred miles north of the Sussex coast on Friday night; and coming in as a ‘Guest’ to cover for his absence is Ben Hopwood.
The 25 year old who hails from Salford actually began this season in the colours of the Sussex club (where he was a valued member of their National Knock-out Cup [NKOC], National Trophy & Gold Cup treble winning squad last term) and top scored against Kent for the Eagles when the SLYDE Kings claimed that memorable victory at Arlington on Good Friday.
A sequence of events emanating from that humiliating reverse over Easter saw the Eagles reshuffle their pack and the twice GB Under 15s champion saw himself the very unfortunate victim of the re-declared squad. Hopwood – who has since moved onto Stoke – will have cause aplenty to make the Eastbourne management regret that move and in doing so, help out the Kings’ cause when he returns to Arlington on Friday.
Hopwood has ‘Guested’ with distinction in a recent away fixture for the Sittingbourne-based side, scoring paid 13 points when he rode against Belle Vue in his native Manchester in Kent’s notable win there in August. Now Hopwood is the man his former team boss at the Isle of Wight, Chris Hunt is looking to, to fill the steel shoes of the Kings’ favourite Ayres at yet another of the Mancunian’s former home tracks.
A further change is necessary from the first leg (which ended disappointingly in a 47-43 win for the Eagles) as Kent’s experienced reserve Luke Clifton is out with knee ligament damage – the legacy of a crash in that first leg at Central Park last week. So for the first time all season a change from the declared reserve pairing is needed to be made, with 17 year old Kyle Roberts coming into the side and becoming only the eighth rider (excluding ‘Guests’) used by the Central Park-based side this season.
Roberts is, unusually these days, a rider who combines his motorcycle Speedway career with that of the pedal-powered version of the sport, Cycle Speedway – and was second in this year’s British Indoor Championships in that discipline. In normal Speedway, Roberts is a protégé of the former British Grand Prix winner Chris Harris and is a full-asset of his home city club, Coventry. Roberts was a member of the Coventry Storm side which rode at Central Park in the Knock-out Cup earlier this term.
Hopwood and Roberts hook up with a quintet of riders who actually remain the only side to have claimed victory at Eastbourne’s Arlington fortress all season and that win back over the Easter weekend (albeit before the Sussex seasiders added the Elite League rider Adam Ellis to their team) will give heart to travelling Kings’ fans hopeful of seeing a repeat performance.
Hopwood and Roberts hook up with a quintet of riders who actually remain the only side to have claimed victory at Eastbourne’s Arlington fortress all season and that win back over the Easter weekend (albeit before the Sussex seasiders added the Elite League rider Adam Ellis to their team) will give heart to travelling Kings’ fans hopeful of seeing a repeat performance.
Even when Ellis was in the hosts’ side, the SLYDE-sponsored Kings only went down by a slender four points when they paid their TPNL return visit to Eastbourne in July – with the five remaining members of the visitors side this Friday, all contributing significantly in a narrow 43-47 defeat: skipper Luke Bowen & James Shanes hitting double figures, Jack Thomas scoring paid nine, David Mason (who rode for the Eagles in the 2015 season) scoring four and Danno Verge contributing paid six points from the reserve berth.
That meeting had one very significant moment when Shanes became the only rider to date to head home Ellis in a home TPNL fixture; and with Shanes repeating that with a race victory over the Eagles’ World Under 21 rider and Bowen beating Ellis twice also in the first leg, it looks as if the Kings’ heat leaders may hold something of an Indian Sign over the South of France-born racer.
TAGS: Kent Kings