Matt Maher: New magazine helps Cradley Heathens stay alive off the track

For most people, the coronavirus lockdown has at the very least provided rare time to review and reflect on life.

For Skelding, a timber salesman who saw his trade grind to a halt almost overnight when the pandemic began to bite, it has led to an exciting new venture centred around his passion for Cradley Heathens speedway.

A lifelong supporter, Skelding had for the last seven years been responsible for producing the club’s race night programmes.

But with the season still stuck behind the tapes and the Heathens back on hiatus in any case, having pulled out of league racing late last year, he has used his spare time to dig further into the club’s illustrious past.

The result is a new magazine, designed in the same format as a programme, which tells the story of the Heathens’ glory years before they were evicted from their Dudley Wood home in 1995.

Titled Dudley Wood Diary, the first issue is out later this month and features an interview with former world champion Billy Hammill, whose official fan club was run by Skelding for more than a decade.

“I’m a Cradley nut and I don’t mind saying that,” laughs Skelding. “I have been pretty much all my life.

“With the club not racing this year and having a lot more time on my hands than I usually would, I just thought it would be nice to do something.

“The Heathens were a huge part of the community back at Dudley Wood and still are in many ways. There are so many great stories to tell.”

Skelding’s own story is interesting enough. A fan since being taken to his first race meeting at the age of six, the Heathens have helped to shape his life.

He met his wife Kathryn at a meeting back in 1989, while his second career as a programme editor (Skelding is a self-taught graphic designer) owes everything to his association with the club and the sport.

But this is a bit more than just one man’s passion. At a time when the Heathens find themselves at a low ebb – quite possibly the lowest since the departure from Dudley Wood – the magazine can also act as a focal point for a fanbase which again finds itself without a team on the track.

Certainly few other stories in West Midlands sport have been the cause of so much frustration over the past decade than the Heathens.

For a brief period around 2012, after the team had been revived and was regularly drawing crowds of more than 1,000 in the National League, momentum seemed to be on their side and hope of finding a new permanent home was genuine.

But it just never happened as, ultimately, the obstacles proved too much to overcome. Last November the club’s management team were forced to acknowledge they had finally run out of road.

Skelding’s magazine, then, is also a means of preserving the progress of recent years when the Heathens acquired a new generation of fans despite not having a track to call their own.

“When they first announced they were bringing a team back a lot of people were sceptical, myself included,” he says.

“But it did bring the community back together. The people at the race nights were the same people who had been at Dudley Wood and they brought their children and grandchildren with them.

“There is definitely a sense of wanting to keep people talking about the Heathens. Right now the outlook isn’t great but you never know what the future might bring. Since I first announced I would be taking the project on the response has been phenomenal. There are an awful lot of people who still care about the club.”

Though the magazine is being billed as the 2020 programme, Skelding has set no limit on how many issues he will produce and frankly, there is no shortage of history in which he can delve.

Back in the 1980s the Heathens were among the most successful clubs in the world, winning two British titles and eight Knockout Cups. They had no fewer than seven riders crowned world champion during a 15-year period, starting in 1981 with Bruce Penhall, Skelding’s first sporting hero.

“Bruce Penhall changed it all for me,” he says. “If I am being honest when my mom and dad first took me to the speedway I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the noise.

“But when Bruce Penhall arrived in 1978 it was like he had come from another planet. Here was this guy who was all glitz and glamour, rocking up in the middle of the Black Country. For me from that point it was all systems go. I was hooked.

“The Heathens were never a fashionable club and Dudley Wood was never the prettiest of stadiums but on a Saturday night it was the only place to be.

“The atmosphere, the noise and the smell, with five to six thousand people packed in. There was nowhere else quite like it.”

Memories, for now, might be all Heathens fans have. Thankfully, there is no shortage of those to keep the name alive, even while the bikes remain silent.

The first issue of Dudley Wood Diary is available to order from Monday. For more information, visit curtis-sport.com