We were pleased to see so many Tigers fans at both Somerset on Friday night and around Cardiff on Saturday, we all probably needed a short break and to enjoy ourselves after recent events.
The Rebels pairing of Jason Doyle and Tigers asset Josh Grajczonek were worthy winners of the Pairs Title on Friday night in what was a very hard fought meeting around the pacey Oak Tree Arena.
Our duo of Joe Screen and James Wright were, we believe, in the harder group of the two, however did manage to perform pretty well and kept us in contention alongside the other pairings. Following a heat 1 last place, the skipper was impressively unbeaten in his next 3 rides, whilst James battled gamely in every heat and clearly was putting in lots of effort for his two third places.
As you’ve since read, Friday night was James’ final outing as a Glasgow rider, having decided to take a break from the sport for a while. We have enjoyed working with him and he really is a lovely guy. We are certain he will race again, and hopefully will be able to once again perform at the level we all know he is capable of.
So where does this leave us?
With Management Committee agreement we will be able to arrange a facility to cover James’ absence for a short period of time, else we can sign a replacement rider and re-declare the team.
Having held so many conversations with so many riders, promoters, international team managers and agents, our preference is the latter of the above options. The result of our frenetic activity in the past week or so is that the majority of our potential targets have, unfortunately, not been able to commit to a Sunday track in the UK. One by one our rider options have reduced. That said, we do still have some irons in some fires, however will need to be able to conclude the necessary conversations and paperwork very quickly if we are to introduce change this week. We will update you further mid-week.
As we mentioned last week, only after the next 2 away league meetings – hopefully completed this weekend – will Messrs. Ringwwod, Horwood and Jacobs be allocated a recalculated match average. Anticipating what this is likely to actually mean in average terms, could prospectively allow us a further few points to work with.
We will do what we can, within the constraints that we operate under, to ensure that we all have a stronger team to stand behind, we all deserve that.
More news when we have it, have a good week.