Kent CTA Fire Kings are on the road again this weekend as they head north to Leicester to take on the Lion Cubs in the National Trophy.
The Kings have already been successful in their first two outings of the season and they will be hoping to make it three in a row this Sunday evening.
It’s a third competition and a third first-ever visit, as it’s a National Trophy group match that is the focus of the Sittingbourne Central Park-based Kings first to the East Midlands at the weekend.
The track at Beaumont Park is the country’s newest custom-built circuit and welcomed the sport back to the city of Leicester after a 28 year absence back in 2011. The new Lion Cubs side is a first venture for the ambitious Leicester management into National League-level racing and a side has been put together to compete alongside Kent, Mildenhall and Stoke in the NT which promises without question to be the greatest challenge to date for the new-look and growing-in-confidence CTA Fire Kings.
At number one for the home side is James Sarjeant, who has previously marched to two successive GB Under 15s Championship runner-up slots before progressing to the senior ranks and finds himself across the Midlands in Coventry’s Elite League side as one of their Fast track reserves for 2014. Sarjeant has experience of riding for Leicester when they competed in the Premier League and will represent a significant challenge on his home track to the Kings’ own Fast track riders, skipper Simon Lambert and Ben Morley.
A fellow youth starlet who’s making strides at senior level now is twice GB Junior Short track champion Tom Woolley – Woolley from Burton also has an FIM silver medal from finishing runner up in the Gold Cup championship in Flattrack and will be a handful at reserve alongside another former British Youth Champion in yet another oval motorcycling discipline, James Shanes who made his name initially and conquered the nationals at junior level in Grasstrack.
Remarkably a third GB youth champion in the Lion Cubs’ pride is Daniel Greenwood – the British Youth Speedway champ from 2007 lines up alongside namesake but no relation, Oliver Greenwood. Also looking to pull up trees in the Leicester challenge for the National Trophy is the two-time GB Under 21 Grasstrack champ, Tom Perry and completing a line up which has a very much ‘team of all the talents’ look about it, is yet another one-time youth champion at grasstrack, young Yorkshire rider, Max Clegg.
For the currently rampant CTA Fire Kings this will be their biggest challenge of the new season and the side will be bolstered by the return of experienced vice-captain David Mason who had to miss the trip up to Scunthorpe due to a nasty bout of influenza.
The meeting gets underway at 4pm at the Jordan Road Surfacing Stadium, Beaumont Sports Complex,
1 The Lions, Beaumont Leys, Leicester, LE4 1DZ