The Kent CTA Fire Kings second season in the National League is about to get underway and Supremo Roger Cearns has had his way.

It was a successful first season for Speedway at Central Park and Cearns is hoping that it can only get bigger and better in the clubs second campaign.

Speaking about the introduction of speedway to Sittingbourne, he said: “Introducing Speedway as an extra event in the Central Park calendar of family entertainment, weekly on Mondays from April through to September, proved a big hit with so many local people last year and that’s very pleasing”, explained the stadium owner.

“Also proving to be a great success has been the innovative 20 feet tall sound barrier, which has worked superbly.  That barrier and the reduced decibels from the new silencers used on the bikes has ensured that Specialist Sound Consultants’ tests have proved we are always within agreed noise limits.  With this allaying the concerns of neighbours, we are applying now for a couple of small but important changes to the Planning conditions”.

Currently speedway gets underway at Central Park at 6:30pm and Roger is keen to move that to an hour later to hopefully attract bigger crowds to the events.

He added: “The exact position regarding our current application to Swale Council is this.  Because of our current curfew of 8.30pm, it means we have to start on Monday evenings at 6.30pm and though we have enjoyed good crowds despite this early start, ideally we would really like to start at the more usual time for evening midweek sporting events of 7.30pm.

“This would give working people and school children and students more time to get home and come out for their evening’s entertainment, as well as allowing more people to travel from further afield, bringing trade into the town.  We are asking therefore for the curfew to be changed to 10pm but as few matches last more than two hours the most likely finishing time will be 9.30pm.  We can, after all, play a football match every evening with much larger and rowdier crowds, so why not Speedway?”

“The recent leaflet we have seen is very misleading whereby it seems to suggest we want to hold events from 3pm to 10pm every day of the week.  Clearly we have no intention of doing this and will not be staging Speedway on any day other than Monday.  This is the day we have been allocated by the league. On Bank Holiday Mondays meetings start at 3pm and last for around two hours.  It’s really unfortunate that some mischievous persons choose to print and circulate such inaccurate comments, trying to scare residents with misinformation.

“The other part of our current request for a small change to our planning consent, is to allow us on a few occasions in the season, to run more than 15 heats. We want to be allowed on a few meetings a year, to hold up to 23 heats so that we can stage some Individual events and maybe even an International Match. We have the perfect venue for a Test Match, which would be fantastic for the rapidly expanding town of Sittingbourne “.

Kent’s season gets underway on Easter Monday in front of what’s expected to be a bumper Bank Holiday crowd on April 21st – 3pm start time with last season’s championship runners-up King’s Lynn the visitors in the Easter Trophy.