A stirring comeback from the Kent SLYDE Kings at Birmingham in the National Trophy First Leg on Wednesday came up just short of achieving parity on the night but restricted the home side to a narrow four points margin. 
With the Second Leg to come tomorrow at the Sittingbourne based club’s own Central Park fortress, there’s certainly everything to play for as the SLYDE Kings chase down their first ever piece of national team Speedway silverware.
Indeed, only a calamitous crash involving Kent’s number one and skipper Luke Bowen in the final heat (a last heat decider at the home of the League champions for a third consecutive visit there being itself a remarkable feat for Chris Hunt’s men) prevented a repeat of the 45-45 draw the two sides played out last month. However one looks at the state of play between the division’s top two sides as the 2016 season progresses, the fact that they are extraordinarily even-matched is a given.
Again, as it had been in May, it was a 5-1 reverse in the penultimate race of the match (heat 14) which proved decisive – the two teams being locked together at 39-39 after 13 heats. That such parity had been restored at that point had been courtesy of a remarkable mid-meeting comeback: three consecutive 4-2s to the visitors from heats 9 through to 11 inclusive changing what had threatened at the hallway stage to be a damaging deficit as the tie progressed.
Things couldn’t actually have started any better for the SLYDE Kings. Heat One saw the Brummies’ much-vaunted number one Zach Wajtknecht stay at the start, looking down at his stationary machine while the Kent skipper Bowen and the very determined young Jack Thomas stormed away to maximum points. Bowen’s winning time was the fastest at Perry Barr this season.
Things couldn’t actually have started any better for the SLYDE Kings. Heat One saw the Brummies’ much-vaunted number one Zach Wajtknecht stay at the start, looking down at his stationary machine while the Kent skipper Bowen and the very determined young Jack Thomas stormed away to maximum points. Bowen’s winning time was the fastest at Perry Barr this season.
In the Travel Plus National League [TPNL] encounter at Perry Barr, the home side’s highly-rated Jack Smith had suffered a nightmare pointless evening and his tentative performance in the opening race, where he made no impression whatsoever on the Kings’ pairing ahead of him, suggested that perhaps he was to struggle again.
In fact that proved not to be the case – starting with a good win in the very next race the son of former World number no. 5 Andy Smith was this time to finish top points scorer for the hosts, recording a double figures score: for the up and coming young GB international it was a third such score in successive home matches: 10 paid 11 points.
His reserve team mate, the 15 year old Jack Parkinson-Blackburn was to do equally well, scoring paid 11 paid 14 and the 5-1 the two ‘Jacks’ achieved in heat 2 immediately levelled matters – Kent’s Danno Verge this time suffering machine woes.
Heat 3 set the trend for an extraordinary evening’s racing from Kent SLYDE Kings’ Danny Ayres – storming around the outside on bend two in truly dominant fashion to chalk up the first of five magnificent race wins, most of which were achieved in similar barnstorming fashion.
Meanwhile for the homesters the ‘Guest’ drafted in for their injured skipper Tom Perry, Belle Vue Colts’ Matt Williamson was having a torrid time: falling in each of his first three rides. In a week when Williamson’s selection as a ‘Guest’ in a TPNL match elsewhere had caused such unaccountable controversy, perhaps Birmingham boss Graham Drury was rueing his own choice of the former Cradley man to bolster his sextet: with Rider Replacement covering for their other injury absentee, Tom Bacon.
Danyon Hume on the other hand was a revelation – beating Bowen (a hugely notable scalp) in heat 5 and partnering Parkinson-Blackburn to a 5-1 in heat 8. That heat is often seen as pivotal in a close match of this type and with a maximum against them, suddenly the match and indeed whole Final situation looked dangerously precarious for the Kent SLYDE Kings – six down at the midway point (though of course only a quarter of the way through the two legged Final as a whole).
Step up James Shanes who won heat 9 with Verge at last finding himself under power for a full four laps, taking a vital point to narrow the gap to four.
The next two races saw Ayres and then his skipper repeat the race winning dose with David Mason taking an equally vital third place – holding at bay none other than Wajtknecht. A great effort by Kent’s hugely experienced ‘Magic Man’ who was at this juncture suffering badly from the fall he’d suffered laying down to avoid the stricken Williamson in heat 7.
With Bowen and Shanes continuing in similar fashion in heat 11, remarkably it was now all square and that’s how it stayed with further wins for the two men of the match, Ayres and Bowen.
Heat 14 was always looking like it would be decisive on the night and so ultimately it proved. Mason was now really ailing with illness and Luke Clifton was throughout the meeting suffering badly from the enormous battering his efforts on Monday had left both his body and bike – his extremely badly-bruised leg injury being further exacerbated by two heat 2 falls. This pairing for the visitors were up against the always useful when the going gets tough, Darryl Ritchings (stand in skipper on the night for the Brummies) and the totally dialled-in Smith; and a third 5-1 on the night to the hosts was the outcome.
A four point deficit then, going into a last heat decider – but all was not lost though by any means as the big two of Bowen and the unbeaten (and indeed unbeatable) Ayres were out for the Kent SLYDE Kings in that final heat. For the Brummies, it showed how much their number one Wajtknecht’s star had fallen and indeed their vulnerability on the night at heat leader level, that Drury chose Hume and Williamson (who had redeemed himself somewhat by winning heat 13) as his nominated rider picks.
From the gate the two Brummies were fast trapping but again Ayres stormed around the boards and Bowen followed him: going down the back straight it was on: the 5-1 needed to force a draw on the night and nullify entirely the home advantage of the first leg.
Then disaster: coming out of the fourth bend Bowen’s bike picked up dirt, reared up horribly and in a sickening thud which reverberated around the shocked stadium deposited the skipper onto the track with his machine bike falling heavily onto his lower leg.
There’s probably barely a rider in the sport who would be able to remount and ride on, but Bowen is made of sterner stuff and in a flash the Harlow racer was back on his machine in pursuit of the two Brummies who had of course now passed him. It was of course a fruitless though heroic endeavour and the Kent fans were left instead to celebrate the completion of Ayres’ debut away maximum and reflect that a four points deficit going into the second leg on Monday (27/6) does give the club a great chance of coming out on top on aggregate.
A breathless Kent Team Manager Chris Hunt was struggling to take in all the twists and turns of a monumentally dramatic night, said: “Luke is now off to hospital and I’m concerned about his foot injury which on the face of it looks worrying. It was a magnificent effort to come back and force a last heat decider and of course we were so unlucky in that race not to actually force a draw. The upshot is our season long unbeaten record is over but in truth if I’d been offered a four points deficit to take into the second leg I’d have taken it. But we are far from complacent about our chances – the second leg is going to be an extremely close affair. They had the two Toms (Perry & Bacon) out having a spin after the match and I expect both of them to be back. We were left like the walking wounded at the end with both Lukes and David suffering and Danno had a bad night mechanically so there’s recovery time needed before we go again on Monday”.
A breathless Kent Team Manager Chris Hunt was struggling to take in all the twists and turns of a monumentally dramatic night, said: “Luke is now off to hospital and I’m concerned about his foot injury which on the face of it looks worrying. It was a magnificent effort to come back and force a last heat decider and of course we were so unlucky in that race not to actually force a draw. The upshot is our season long unbeaten record is over but in truth if I’d been offered a four points deficit to take into the second leg I’d have taken it. But we are far from complacent about our chances – the second leg is going to be an extremely close affair. They had the two Toms (Perry & Bacon) out having a spin after the match and I expect both of them to be back. We were left like the walking wounded at the end with both Lukes and David suffering and Danno had a bad night mechanically so there’s recovery time needed before we go again on Monday”.
Image courtesy of Elizabeth Leslie
TAGS: Kent Kings