Kent CTA Fire Kings’ luck certainly deserted them ahead of the weekend with travel chaos and illness hampering preparations, however this didn’t stop them coming back to Kent with victory.

Despite missing three of their top four riders the victory means that the Kent side are now up to third place in the National League.

The away match was versus Devon in Plymouth and all riders and a good-sized contingent of travelling supporters were very aware that the 250 miles journey (more for many of the riders heading from homes as far afield as Lincolnshire) from Kent to that famous south-west coastal city on a Friday, in the holiday season was potentially fraught with difficulty.

No-one though could’ve anticipated just how horrific the traffic was to be, with major problems on the M25, the M4, the A303, and the M5 and then on the A30 all conspiring to, at times, make it seem an impossible dream to reach the St. Boniface Arena home of the Demons.

The latest run of devilish bad luck befalling the Kent side reared its head before a clutch pedal on a travelling van was pressed in anger, with Benji Compton having a torrid night with food poisoning and having to concede at 7.15am that he’d be in no fit state to ride.

The bug-ridden former League Riders Champion was indeed the second star with such a distinction on his career CV to admit defeat in his battle for fitness, as David Mason’s nasty kidney infection was also to keep him on the sidelines.

Rider Replacement was already the plan for the missing Mason but with Compton now joining his vice-captain on the sick list, the CTA Fire Kings’ team boss John Sampford had a race to find a ‘guest’ replacement to bolster his ranks.  The geographical remoteness of the Plymouth area hardly helped; and so it was to a Cornwall-based racer he turned, with Coventry Storm’s ever-willing Martin Knuckey answering the call.

So the convoy (albeit starting all from different points of the Speedway compass) took to the road. The first major problem was to be skipper Simon Lambert’s: his van, stricken roadside on the M42 near Birmingham.

Attempts at recovery proving fruitless, a new vehicle had to call upon; bikes and contents shifted: the race against the clock was on.  Meanwhile, for the Kent number one the A303 was proving to be Ben Morley’s undoing: surely the Ancient Britons lugging those massive stone slabs to create Stonehenge must have been able to travel across the Salisbury Plain quicker than the horribly snarled up holiday traffic?

At the track down in Devon the concerns mounted and with neither surviving Kings’ heat-leader anywhere near it seemed disaster loomed as the clock ticked on towards 7pm, the deadline given by the meeting referee for a team to be declared. Both riders were contacted: Simon had made amazing, almost miraculous, progress from his second starting point and was no more than 25 minutes away.

The sadly beleaguered Ben was perhaps thirty minutes (maybe more) behind his skipper. The referee wouldn’t wait: the decision had to be made, start without both and rely on late inputs or decide to shift the R/R to one of them and hope against hope the other would arrive.  Fortunately another locally-based rider was available to step in as a second ‘guest’, Scunthorpe’s Sam Chapman; and with Simon clearly the far more likely rider to arrive in time for meaningful action, the decision was reluctantly made to pull Ben Morley from the side, using R/R at number one – meaning all of the rest of the team could take one of his rides.

The decision was vindicated when as a long-delayed heat two came to an end (a heat win for the Kings’ Danny Ayres pulling back some of the deficit from a max in heat one for the home side), Lambert’s replacement vehicle speeded into the pits.

So come heat 4, the skipper was out in track action: to reel off the first of six truly amazing heat wins – a heroic effort surely not matched ever in the short history of the side from Central Park. Going into heat six (at the point when the Morley vehicle finally arrived: 8.25pm by this time, a full one hour and 10 minutes after the start time of what was by now a very delayed meeting) the Demons still held a six point heat.

The next three heats were to prove crucial.  First up it was a fantastic one-two from the two young guests: Knuckey winning from Chapman to record a 5-1 in heat 7.  The dose was repeated in heat 8: Danny Ayres riding this circuit for the first-time ever, recording a second race win of a busy evening for the Newmarket racer and the ultra-professional Aaron Baseby partnering him home; and a lead was established the CTA Fire Kings were never to relinquish.

Next up was Lambert in imperious mood but plucky Jason Garrad (like Ayres seeing the tricky Plymouth circuit for a first time) getting third to move the visitors away into a good lead.

With Simon making it look simple with three heat wins in the next six races a nine point victory and a first-ever League double was secured.

Giving his thoughts after a fraught day, Sampford said: “If someone had told me just half an hour before tapes up we would end up winners of this match by nine points, I’d have recommended they were sent off to the funny farm!  That we did is testimony to the tremendous efforts of all six riders who took to track.

“For Simon to record a full 18 points maximum after the terrible journey he had speaks volumes to his ability and his amazing dedication to the cause.  The two guests, we are so grateful they agreed to step in and their contribution was very important.

“I have to say that Aaron Baseby rode a really seasoned rider’s meeting: his contribution was steady, assured and so professional.  Our reserves were inevitably more ragged but Jason contributed importantly and Danny got his best ever league score, in double figures – with two heat wins – and all that on a track he’d never even seen before. It is a terrible misfortune that Ben arrived too late to be able to ride after what we know was an awful journey; but the whole matter was ultimately out of everyone’s hands and was just that really, an awful misfortune”.

Moving into third place after a day like the riders and fans of the Kent CTA Fire Kings had endured was very sweet indeed. And a postscript: time finally did catch up on all as the curfew intervened to prevent Simon Lambert from what would surely have been a successful defence of his Bronze Helmet – meaning the Kent skipper will be putting the Match Race Championship crown on the line again next vs. a visiting Cradley Heathen tonight at Central Park.