After last week’s terrific win over the Scottish capital city side Edinburgh Monarchs, it’s a side from the Borders heading down to take on the resurgent Kent TouchTec Kings at Central Park on Tuesday. Yes, the latest first time visitors to Kent Speedway are the Berwick Bandits.
The Bandits are actually an English club, though a tad confusedly ride at the home of a well-established Scottish league football club, Berwick Rangers – and the Northumbrians come with a very cosmopolitan line up featuring two Danes, two Australians and an Austrian.
It seems appropriate that an area synonymous with the invading Vikings of old should have a couple of Danes in their ranks. The first is Nikolaj Busk Jakobsen who was introduced to league Speedway in this country back in 2015 by Kent’s own co-promoter Len Silver when Len ran the track in Hertfordshire, Rye House. The former SGB Wild Card rider Jakobsen has been with Berwick since 2017. A newcomer to Berwick this term is Jakobson’s countryman, Kasper Andersen – a 23-year-old who has had a fairly nomadic spell since debuting here in the UK in 2018 with spells at King’s Lynn, Sheffield and Redcar. For both Danes it’ll be a Central Park debut on Tuesday, As it shall be for the two Antipodeans in the Berwick line up. Matching Kent’s pair of Aussies (Troy Batchelor & Cameron Heeps) will be two Bandits from the land of the Southern Cross: the experienced Aaron Summers who has won the Elite League previously with Coventry and Berwick’s skipper, Jye Etheridge.
Australians are a very familiar sight in British Speedway (it is after all the country which gave the world the sport of Speedway, 98 years ago now!) but it’s fairly unique to find an Austrian plying his trade here – but that’s the case with Dany Gappmaier. The rider from Salzburg has been playing the same tune with Berwick throughout his five seasons racing here in the UK – the TouchTec Kings will need to heed the warning ‘Mind The Gap’ if Dany is in good form.
Those are all newcomers to the Central Park circuit but not so with the two British teenagers who complete the Bandits’ line up. Both are multi-British Youth Champions (with seven world or GB titles at schoolboy level between them) and seen at Kent before in National League action previously: Kyle Bickley and Leon Flint.
Both Bickley & Flint will be competing alongside Kent’s Dan Gilkes in the GB U19s championship at Mildenhall next Sunday – with the good news that the TouchTec Kings’ talented teen is fit to ride after his crash last Tuesday in the match vs the Edinburgh Monarchs. The Kings then are at full strength and looking to get more SGB Championship points in the match which starts at 6.30pm on Tuesday (17th.) – gates open at 5pm.