After a month on the sidelines, it’s time for the Chargers to take to the track again. They haven’t ridden since beating the Berwick Bullets in their opening home fixture. I hope there are some of you here tonight who didn’t come to the Chargers’s opening meeting but have heard good things and are coming to see what the fuss is all about. If this is your first time at an NDL meeting, I can almost guarantee it won’t be your last; these guys simply don’t know when to stop fighting.
Last time I wrote some programme notes I said how the track was starting to behave, and how well it had held up to the rain showers before Redcar came to town (for the second time). That was well and truly put to the test two weeks ago, with heavy rain just before the tapes went up, and throughout the opening heats. Even though the track was somewhat heavy (after doing the raceday jackpot draw I had to spend the rest of the evening in my socks, so my shoes didn’t make a mess of the carpet in the top bar), the fact we were able to race on it at all was a minor miracle. That the track was able to (almost) absorb that volume of water and maintain a surface that can be ridden bodes well for the rest of the season.
Two weeks ago we had the £50 raceday jackpot prize unclaimed. If you’ve opened your programme board tonight and found green ticket 515 from last time bring it up to us by the Champs Bar and we’ll give you your winnings. Green tickets were being sold by the “inside” entrance last week, so if you bought your tickets from a handsome man (ahem) in the upper bar, you could be a winner. As always, we’ll be selling more raffle tickets tonight for your chance to win another £100 or a trip to the centregreen for a couple of heats with the Stadium Manager, so if you haven’t already got your tickets, come and find us by the gates and get some – £2 gives you 15 chances to win.
It’s now just over two months until the British SGP in Cardiff, and as always we’ll be running a coach to the Principality Stadium for the day. If you want a seat (or seats) come and see us in the bar and get your name on the list. Depending on the number of seats we sell, we’re hoping to offer adult seats for £20 a head. That’s three and a half times cheaper than a train, and the cost of about a quarter a tank of unleaded, so we really are the cheapest way to get to Cardiff for the big day. Make sure your name is on the list before we sell out!
So on to tonight, where we face Plymouth in the third tier of speedway. There’s a certain familiarity to this fixture, as it feels although Plymouth were at Oxford every other week in 2007, the year before our closure. Although the team names are different tonight (Chargers vs Centurions instead of Cheetahs vs Devils), the aim remains the same – send them back to Devon with no league points.
Go Chargers