TT INTERVIEW

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive discusses the Swindon Speedway situation with Andy & Neil from ‘Swindon Needs Speedway’

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SWINDON SPEEDWAY & OSBORNE

CH – Swindon needs Speedway. But the bikes without brakes haven’t been seen in the Wiltshire town for 5 years and counting. It’s not a simple story, and I’ve only really scratched the surface, but for the fans of a fine old club it’s been a terrible time.

The situation is in large part down to the actions and omissions of our former owner, who has made lots of money from developing the land: with disputed plans to make more. He tried to lead us down a similar path – fortunately not getting as far at Plainmoor- and now Swindon Speedway fans are asking for our help.

Swindon Council has it in its power to help speedway return, and the simple “ask” is for as many people as possible to sign this petition:

https://ww5.swindon.gov.uk/moderngov/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?Id=64

If you want to know more, please keep reading.

I’ve been in touch with Andy Freegard and Neil Ockwell from “Swindon Needs Speedway”. Here, they explain what the club means to them, what has happened to it and how -maybe- it can be revived.

Swindon Robins Speedway are bigger in their sport than Torquay is in ours. They have- if you’ll pardon the pun- a solid track record of success.

Neil was a baby when he was taken to his first speedway meeting. His parents were stalwarts of the Supporters Club, worked at the bar, ran the travel club and club shop, worked on the turnstiles. His grandad had actually laid the track at the Abbey Stadium before the first season ‘s racing in 1949. Neil has had a lifetime there, and was in charge of the club’s Instagram account when- in their last season of competition- they won the league for the third time in 7 years and the fifth time overall.

Andy’s speedway love affair began when his family took him along to a meeting in 1974, aged 5. He stuck with the club during some tough times in the 1980s and early 90’s and the 2000s saw away trips in a lower league as far as Berwick, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

With top flight status regained, The Robins won the league in 2012: a victory he had been waiting for his whole life. More silverware came in 2017 and 2019, and the closure has been really hard to take because it came straight after their best-ever year and a period of 8 seasons where they were the most successful they had ever been.

Speedway attendances in the UK don’t tend to be massive, but Swindon would normally draw 1000 and double that for big matches.

There has been no speedway at Swindon since 2019. I asked Andy what has happened to the club? 

“It’s been a bit of a saga, but I’ll try and keep it brief. Essentially, planning of some kind or another for demolition or re-development of the Abbey Stadium had been in submission since circa 2007. Both the greyhound and speedway tracks had been re-worked after the 2018 season, under the pretence that it would provide better racing (which it did to be fair), but hindsight now tells us that was all about creating more room for houses!

The 2020 speedway season was cancelled due to COVID and expectations were that we would return, with all the other clubs, in 2021. Unfortunately, all hopes of a Robins return were dashed in January 2021 when speedway club owner Terry Russell made the decision that the still threatening Covid situation would continue to restrict the number of fans allowed to watch live sport and therefore affect the economics of Swindon Speedway through a downturn in revenue, therefore there would be no speedway at The Abbey in 2021.

While that was difficult for fans to hear, what was hard to swallow was the second reason given. Bearing in mind, as part of the stadium regeneration permission the speedway had to be allowed to continue throughout the rebuilding of the stadium, Mr. Russell felt that another unfavourable factor was “the likely disruption to spectator facilities during the stadium rebuild”.

Work eventually started on the stadium rebuild in September 2021, the car park was full of pieces of prefabricated structure. These were parts of the new main customer concourse and grandstand and were being assembled on the site.

Terry Russell announced that there would be no speedway at Swindon in 2022 and there would be no return until 2023, due to “uncertainty around the stadium works”

The speedway pits and changing rooms were demolished in November 2021, along with perimeter walls and turnstiles. The back straight stand was demolished in January 2022. On 8th September 2022, Clarke Osborne denied rumours that the stadium was due to close. But just 14 days later, Terry Russell announced Speedway would permanently cease to operate from the Abbey Stadium, citing “uncertainty over long-term greyhound future and financial viability”.

It’s almost as if you can’t trust the man!! 

“The stadium is still operating greyhounds today and a speedway track remains. The old home straight stand is still in situ, whilst the new back straight structure is in place, it has no services to it (electricity, water, gas etc) but has been signed-off by Swindon Borough Council as meeting planning conditions! The stadium car park is now a housing estate!

Osborne has applied to Swindon Borough Council for change of use on the stadium footprint land to enable his housing project to be completed – this is despite the recent announcement of a new 5-year ARC greyhound contract at the stadium!

In August, a group of speedway fans launched a fight to keep Swindon Speedway at the Abbey Stadium. They are urging Gaming International, owners of the stadium, to complete the stadium, as agreed in the planning application”.

So, to sum up:

· Clarke Osborne has managed to build houses on the car park and has now shown his hand- he wants to “redevelop” the whole site

· In 2022 he denied that speedway wouldn’t return, but that was rapidly shown to be untrue

· Important speedway facilities have been destroyed and not reinstated

· Greyhounds can run, but bikes can’t, and there are no plans to revive speedway at the stadium

I asked about Clarke Osborne’s history at Swindon:

“Osborne first became involved at Swindon in 1997 when British Car Auctions sold the stadium to BS Group PLC (as they were known then)

Within 3 years of them purchasing the Abbey Stadium, the first sign that changes to the stadium afoot came in the shape of a planning application to build a new stadium and permanent market building on the adjacent stadium car park, adding a new David Lloyd tennis centre on the site of the original demolished stadium site. Whilst this planning application, put forward in 2000, was eventually dropped because of the tennis centre being built on land further to the east of the stadium, this proved to be the beginning of some two decades of uncertainty about the stadium’s future, when multiple planning applications with differing alternative new stadium layouts were submitted for approval”.

I see he has been asking for a new site to be provided. What are your views on that?

“You can’t help but be extremely sceptical. Given what has happened at the Abbey Stadium and Osborne’s previous record at Bristol, Milton Keynes, Reading and most recently with you guys, you can’t help but assume a new stadium will not be built, just as it wasn’t at all those other places!”

Andy goes on to explain:

Osborne and Terry Russell, along with Steve Park (a former Director at Swindon Speedway) have formed a new company called Swindon Motorsports, supposedly looking at creating a multi-use Moto Parc, including Speedway, on some land called Studley Grange near J16 of the M4.

Andy is very sceptical about this:

“It was, rather conveniently announced 9-days after the Swindon Needs Speedway fans’ group was launched. It should be great news, but sadly it’s taken with a massive cellar of salt!”

Torquay United Fans Forum, anyone?

Andy has confirmed that our friend George Edwards has been involved in most of the goings-on at the Abbey Stadium, although as we know he is no longer a Director of Gaming International and appears to not be part of Swindon Motorsports.

Swindon Needs Speedway’s petition calls for Osborne and Taylor Wimpey to honour parts 1-15 of a planning agreement, what does that mean?

“Gaming International’s planning application for the houses built all around the stadium perimeter had 15 milestones applied to it, the first 10 of which had to be satisfied for the tranche of houses in the car park to be allowed to be built. These milestones included such things as new stadium buildings (stand, pits, kennels, changing rooms etc), an ‘acoustic barrier’ and car parking. There was also a stipulation in “Schedule 1” of the planning which required continuous operation of the Speedway and greyhounds during the milestone phases.

Swindon Borough Council have assessed and signed off milestones 1-10 (the trigger for the car park houses), despite there being no pits, no services to the shell of the new stand and the ‘acoustic barrier’ being essentially a garden fence (Osborne claimed an ‘acoustic barrier’ costs over 500k when giving evidence at a planning hearing to build on Coventry’s Brandon Stadium!). Therefore, we are calling on Swindon Borough Council to revisit that decision and enforce the remaining 5 planning milestones, which have not been started”.

Was there ever a time when Swindon Speedway fans were hopeful that Osborne’s involvement would be positive?

“I think initially it was seen as a good thing because British Car Auctions were struggling. But, as you can see from previous answers, that soon changed as planning applications started to flood in. Things really started to look precarious when the situation at Reading arose in the mid-noughties, and Swindon’s issues started soon afterwards”.

Osborne infamously told Torquay fans that he is a petrol head. Do you think he has much in common with speedway fans?

“Absolutely not, his record of destroying speedway clubs is conclusive evidence to the contrary.

I do find funny his Swindon Motorsports website claim that he created and operated ‘the most successful Speedway venue of the modern era in Bristol’ A Speedway venue that ran for two whole seasons (without planning permission) and was closed, with the Eastville venue eventually sold off to Ikea”.

Older Torquay fans will remember that Bristol Rovers played at Eastville too.

Since losing that ground they have had to groundshare with Bath City and although they are now back in their “Gas” heartland, The Mem is nobody’s idea of a fun afternoon out.

Swindon Needs Speedway are trying to persuade the local decision-makers to take the necessary steps to bring the sport back to the town. They have meetings scheduled with both local MPs next month and have been promised an appointment with Swindon Borough Council to discuss things further. But they are very disappointed with their local authority?

“The stadium planning conditions in the S106 document set by the previous Council are incredibly weak and have been thoroughly exploited by Gaming International. The incumbent Council have signed off the first 10 milestones against what they admit is “a minimum standard” and admit “a new operational stadium has not been built nor could speedway meetings be held tomorrow” It does beg the question, what were the milestones for if not to protect the stadium and Speedway? The remaining milestones remove the last operational stand and therefore would render the stadium inoperable from a crowd perspective! So, the milestones basically took an operational (albeit tired) stadium and, based on the physical state of the stadium signed off under milestones 1-10, turned it into a dead duck!”

Some deterrent to Mr Osborne’s house building plans!

The Council Leader has publicly stated his understanding of Gaming International’s history and reputation, so the outcome is extremely disappointing and hard to understand”.

In contrast with our Torquay experience, Andy has been quite impressed with their local media.

“Our local press has tried to be supportive. Daniel Wood from the Swindon Advertiser has been “all over things” from a while back, and both the local BBC Wiltshire radio and Points West TV have spoken with the action group: I can’t fault them really”.

As Andy and Neil have said, Swindon is a Speedway Town and has been for over 70-years.

As football fans we know how much the clubs we support are part of the fabric of the community.

As Torquay fans we know how much it hurts when this is put at risk.

Please sign the petition!

https://ww5.swindon.gov.uk/moderngov/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?Id=64

Up the Gulls!

Solidarity with the Robins!!

COYY – Clive

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