The Club started the year well with seven partners renewing. Long serving Coach Will Evans and Treasurer Catherine White resigned their posts, but Andrew Cox and Chaz Whalley came on board as Committee members. Club founder Mike Hack received the David Saunders Memorial Trophy from the British Cycling Board for services to cycling. We bought a new cabin, to serve as a clubroom and to enable riders to train indoors on the club’s spinning bikes. The club generated income in excess of £10,000 and we successfully promoted the British Cycle Speedway Cup Final. We finished the year with 67 cycle speedway riders, 15 riders in the Road and Off Road sections, with a further 20 regular officials/ volunteers, to give a total of 102 members, down from 113 in 2018.

The Club enjoyed it’s most successful season ever on the track in 2019. We won eight of the nine team competitions on offer to us in the North & Scotland region, as we completed the league treble for the second time in three years. After 30 years as a club, we reached the status of being undisputed top dogs in the Region, at every level.

Led by Lee Phillips, the 1st team won the North & Scotland League Division 1 title, out of 5 teams, for the third successive year. This was followed up with another win in the Northern Regional Final to qualify for the British Cycle Speedway Cup Final, where we narrowly missed out on finishing 2nd. We won the Northern Fours League, out of 6 teams, for the first time ever and won the Manchester League Division 1, for the first time since 2008. The only trophy to elude us was the North & Scotland K.O. Cup, when we finished 2nd to Edinburgh. We regained the North & Scotland League Division 2 title. Janine Paine’s team won the title, out of 8 teams, after a last heat decider against Fife in the Play-off at Northumbria.

The club really excelled at junior levels again. In the British Club Championship, our u-16 Girls team finished in 3rd place. Under the guidance of new Junior Team Manager Chaz Whalley, the club again qualified for the national series of the BYJL, after winning the North & Scotland group of both the BYJL and the LL. In the national BYJL series, the team finished 3rd, our best finish for over 20 years. The u-13 team won the Northern League Division 3 title, out of 8 teams, for the seventh successive year. The juniors won the Manchester League Division 2 title for the sixth successive year the Northern Junior League, out of 6 teams, for the third successive season and the North & Scotland Junior K.O. Cup.

Individually, Emily Burgess became the club’s first ever World Champion, when she won the World u-16 Girls title in Poland, She then finished 2nd in the Women’s Open World Final, at the age of 15. Nationally, Steve Harris extended his all time record of British Individual title wins to 19, with two o-50 title wins. Emily Burgess won the British Girls Grand Prix series and Frank White won both the Little League u-8 Final and Grand Prix series. Frank won every race of the season at u-8 level!Emily Burgess and Steve Harris were both members of the England teams which won the World Cup at Women’s and Veterans categories respectively. They repeated the feat for Gt. Britain in the ICSF Federations Cups. Emily raced unbeaten to top score in both her matches. Reece Pollitt was the club’s top scorer, with 382 points, he also topped the race averages, on 3.50.

1st team photo, back row, l-r: Kyle Holland, Reece Pollitt, Tomek Wlodarczyk, Lee Phillips, Paul Graham, Steve Harris. Kneeling, l-r: Mick Knowles, Mark Grantham, Emily Burgess, Pawel Idziorek, Matt Snell.