The Kent SLYDE Kings gained their first win of 2015 with a one point victory over the National Trophy holders Mildenhall in an afternoon of high drama and great excitement at Central Park on Monday (4/5) to send a Bank Holiday crowd home happy – and no doubt for many, with fingernails bitten to the quick!!
For having seen a ten point lead reduced down to that solitary point, there were three tension-filled final heats for the Sittingbourne-based side to hold onto to gain the all-important victory. Ben Morley’s heat victories in heats 13 and 15 sandwiching a vital heat 14 triumph for Danny Ayres were in the end enough (just!) to hold on to the delight of the SLYDE-backed Kings’ fans, content that this May Day weekend worked in their favour with two points gained in both the league (courtesy of that draw at Rye House on Saturday and now in the Trophy after Monday’s win).
It had all started much more routinely with a very handy looking ten point lead established by the midway point of proceedings with all of the home side’s top three, skipper Ben Morley, the returning from injury Danny Ayres and thankfully recovered also from his heavy spill on Saturday, James Shanes happily unbeaten.
The lead was six going into heat 8 which to date this term has tended to be a major stumbling block for the SLYDE Kings but this time things turned out very differently. Adam Sheppard and Danno Verge (hugely unlucky to have been excluded in heat one when the usual policy of judging first bend bunching to lead to all four riders back to the restart was forsaken by the meeting referee) lined up against a dangerous looking Fen Tigers’ pairing of former Kings’ man Jack Kingston (on a high after annexing the Bronze Helmet the afternoon before up at Mildenhall) and the convincing winner of heat two, Tom Bacon.
Again the first bend saw problems, with Sheppard and Bacon coming together. Sure enough it was all four back but Kingston then made the error of pulling off the track to attempt to access the pits rather than following the new dictate which instructs an immediate return to the restart. For the first time Central Park saw an invoking of the new rule which sees such an offence punished with a 15 metres handicap in the rerun. That rerun happened only at a third time of asking with Sheppard out front and Verge then passing Bacon down the back straight of lap two and the Buckmore Park Futurama runner up Bacon then falling as he entered lap three. Failing to clear the track, the red lights came on and a 5-1 to the home side was awarded.
Ten points, of course, is a trigger for ones opponents to use the Tactical Ride option and to the surprise of some that responsibility was placed– along with the indicating black and white helmet colour – onto another former Kent rider now in the Fen Tigers’ ranks Connor Coles. Up against the rampant looking Ayres it seemed a tall order indeed. But after Kingston’s indiscretion in heat 8 now it was the turn of crowd favourite Danny for a pits-related malfunction, forgetting to turn his fuel tap on and so remaining stuck at the tapes - as Coles sped away to grab six vital points. The frustration for a fired up Ayres was clear for all to see.
And if the crowd were surprised by Coles’ win in heat 9 they were astonished by the events of the following race, where Coles’ namesake Connor Mountain completed a feat of Everest-climbing dimensions passing the SLYDE Kings’ number one Ben Morley to secure a second successive heat advantage for the visitors; and suddenly the ten point lead in a blink of the eye was down to just three!
Shanes' third win from three outings steadied the ship (a great effort by the Puddletown Plunderer who was severely battered and bruised after his efforts of Saturday up in Herts) but with Mountain out again in heat 12 and then Aaron Baseby excluded for a clash with Bacon in the initial staging, there was cause for concern. The race was eventful to put it mildly. Sheppard had already fallen and remounted in the initial staging before his racing partner’s coming together with Bacon. In the restart again Adam was to tumble twice more and gamely race on and this persistence was rewarded when Bacon (the rider he’d pipped to that Futurama crown a fortnight previously) crucially also fell. A 2-4 reverse was the minimised damage and so there was that one point lead duly protected in the next three nail-biting heats.
The joy of the crowd was increased further by Morley storming away from Kingston in the match race championship race to regain the Bronze Helmet he last held in July 2014.
NATIONAL TROPHY
Match points: Kent 2 Mildenhall 1
KENT 47 Ben Morley 3 3 2 3 3 14 Danno Verge X 0 2' 0 2+1 Aaron Baseby 1 2' 2, X 5+1 Danny Ayres 3 3 R 3 F 9 James Shanes 3 3 3 0 9 Jamie Couzins 1' 0 F 0 1+1 Adam Sheppard 2 0 3 2 7 Team Manager: Chris Hunt
MILDENHALL 46 Dan Halsey 1' 1 2 2 2 8+1 Rider replacement – Liam Rumsey Connor Mountain 2 2 3 3 1' 11+1 Jack Kingston F 1' 1 1 2 5+1 Connor Coles 2 1' 6^ 1' 10+2 Tom Bacon 2 3 2 Fx 1 1 9 Luke Ruddick 0 1' 0 1' 1' 3+2 Team Manager: Robert Henry Referee: Christina Turnbull