Dudley Heathens end on a high

Dudley Heathens 50 Birmingham Bulls 46

Dudley Heathens slipped, slithered and slid to victory to end their up and down season on something of a high.

The unceasing labours of the Monmore track staff somehow got this challenge match on, but there were falls aplenty as riders struggled with the surface. Indeed, home No 1 Kyle Newman came to grief in the very first race.

Although his opposite number Jason Garrity swiftly laid down his bike, so slippery was the track that Newman actually had time to get to his feet before the Birmingham man's machine promptly deposited him back on the shale.

Thankfully, both riders escaped unscathed and when Garrity got into trouble on the pits turn in heat 13, Newman, who was just a few feet behind, managed both to get the bike down and miss his tumbling rival almost before he had fallen.

What might well have turned out to be the worst incident of the lot came one race earlier, when Nathan Stoneman got rather further up the first bend kerb than planned and fired across the track, taking out Tom Perry and Jaimie Pickard but, again, with no lasting effects.

As if competing in the conditions was not hard enough anyway, the fallen Stoneman in heat two found the race inexplicably allowed to continue by referee Graham Reeve.

The Birmingham man was left to stand against the second bend safety fence and offer up a heartfelt prayer that the three other riders thundering past just yards away on the following lap would not come to grief at the wrong moment.

But, inbetween all the spills, racing broke out and it was to the credit of both sides that every rider took his full complement of outings.

Among the passing manoeuvres was a typically heart-stopping plunge up the inside into turn three from National League Riders champion Garrity in heat 11 which took him from third to first and appeared to have been launched from a neighbouring postcode.

Dudley were comfortable winners, the visitors flattered by a late burst of scoring with the match already lost.

Ashley Morris topped the home chart, Adam Roynon was the quickest and classiest rider out there – denied a likely paid maximum when shedding a chain at the gate in heat 14 – but the biggest cheers of the night were for the returning Mark Robinson.

Robinson became the first rider to track for both the Cradley Heathens and their new Dudley incarnation – and remarkably, at the age of 43, scored seven paid nine including a race win.

Unsurprisingly, his reactions at the gate were not the sharpest but he attacked the track with relish and the punches of the air with which he greeted the chequered flag in his heat eight win were typical of a man with red, white and green coursing through his veins.

Roynon got his consolation by winning the post-match Les Pottinger Memorial Shield.

But it's Robinson who will never forget this night.

By Tim Hamblin