Retro Speedway: DEFUNCT BRITISH SPEEDWAY TRACKS DVD

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DEFUNCT BRITISH SPEEDWAY TRACKS DVD

Re-visit more than 60 old venues on an evocative journey down Memory Lane

DEFUNCT BRITISH SPEEDWAY TRACKS

SIX HOURS OF GREAT ENTERTAINMENT BROUGHT TO YOU ON TRIPLE DISC DVD!

£18 (plus £2 P&P in UK)

Sit back and enjoy exciting racing as we take you back to the vast majority of British speedway's long lost tracks - from famous big city arenas to remote, much loved outposts in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Lap up the action time again with MORE THAN 250 RACES!

Featuring footage from the following 65 UK and Ireland tracks:
Barrow (Park Road), Belle Vue, Berwick (Berrington Lough), Birmingham (Alexander Sports Stadium, Perry Barr, Bordesley Green), Boston, Bradford, Bristol (Knowle, Eastville), Castleford, Canterbury, Cradley Heath, Crayford, Crewe, Doncaster, Dublin (Harold's Cross), Eastbourne (junior track), Edinburgh (Old Meadowbank, Powderhall), Ellesmere Port, Exeter, Glasgow (White City, Hampden Park, Blantyre 1 & 2, Shawfield), Greenford, Hackney, Halifax, High Beech, Hull (Boulevard, Craven Park), Isle of Wight, Leicester, Linlithgow, Long Eaton, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes (Groveway, Elfield Park), Newport (Somerton Park, Hayley Stadium), New Cross, Norwich, Oxford, Plymouth, Rayleigh, Reading (Smallmead & Training Track), Rochdale, Romford, Rye House, Scunthorpe, Southampton, St Austell (Trelawny), Stoke (Sun Street), Sunderland, Wembley, West Ham, Weymouth (Wessex Stadium 1 & 2), White City (London), Wigan, Wimbledon, Yarmouth.

HOW TO ORDER

Phone: Call Retro Speedway on 07783 729 271.

Online: Use the secure PayPal facility by clicking the Cart button below.

Post: Send cheque/postal order (payable to Retro Speedway) for £20 to: Retro Speedway (Defunct Tracks DVD), 103 Douglas Road, Hornchurch, Essex, RM11 1AW
Add £3.50 when ordering from outside the UK.

REVIEWS

"If you once frequented one or more of these defunct venues, you are almost guaranteed to wallow in unbridled nostalgia while fighting back the tears of lost days gone by."

As reviewed in Speedway Star, week-ending November 1, 2014

As with so many of Retro Speedway's unique collection of video recordings, the stars of the show are not necessarily the leather-clad heroes from yesteryears but the stages on which they performed and the audiences to whom they played.

More so than ever with this extensive collection of footage, three separate DVD's lasting in excess of six hours, covering over 60 tracks which either no longer exist or are very unlikely to stage the sport again.

Almost continuously the viewer is compelled to gaze passed the time-stained and memory-jerking motion pictures to scrutinise the back-drop - the stands, the terraces and other surroundings which once served as hosts to thousands of people's weekly fix of speedway . . . or dirt track racing in the sport's formative years.

And Tony McDonald and friends have gone out of their way to uncover footage from the early years of speedway in the UK, with plenty more from the golden post-war era, when folk packed into venues across the nation.

Many watchers will surely miss much of the racing on first viewing as they peer to recognise their old 'playgrounds', where they spent countless hours when they were younger, or get an insight into what it was like at tracks that pre-dated their interest or they simply never made it to.

Lots of the stadiums featured formed part of speedway's very structure while some were barely a flicker on the sports radar as they came and went almost unnoticed by all but those who once went to them.

From the huge Custom House, home of West Ham for decades, to the tiny and little known Park Road, Barrow, where the sport had a brief renaissance before falling into obscurity again three-and-half decades ago.

The new Wembley will likely never stage another major international meeting again but the old Empire Stadium, synonymous with the names Williams, Moore, Fundin, Briggs, Mauger, Olsen and Penhall, will remain engraved in the sports history, and now the minds of owners of these DVDs, forever.

Will there ever be another Hyde Road, Manchester or Hackney Wick, a Firs Stadium, Norwich or New Cross - the 'Frying Pan'- in south-east London, from where footage from Dirk Bogarde's 1949 film 'Once a Jolly Swagman' is gratefully reproduced.

Exeter's County Ground, unthinkably enveloped by houses, won championships in both top tiers of British racing while forming the home of the legendary Ivan Mauger as well as former British Grand Prix winner Chris Harris.

All are sadly long gone but The Shay, Halifax still exists, albeit not as we knew it - with its wall-of-death like banking - and, like Craven Park, Hull, is prevented from hosting regular speedway by the squaring off and the building of permanent stands at either end.

Did you know Rye House was once big, fast and open? That speedway was even once held at Harold's Cross in Dublin? Or that Romford's town-centre located Brooklands Stadium briefly ran what is already one the world's most dangerous sports, with a concrete wall around the outside!?

Scotland's heritage is also richly reflected with extensive action at the many venues which have been home to both the Edinburgh Monarchs and Glasgow Tigers.

But it's not all about the many tracks which feature - the 250-plus races included on the DVD are laced with plentiful recollections of the amazing exploits of the likes of England greats Peter Collins at Belle Vue's gone but never to be forgotten 'Mecca', adjacent to the equally evocative Zoological Gardens (which also gets a well-deserved documentary-style tribute) and Gary Havelock, at Bradford's vast and iconic Odsal Stadium.

Poignant memories of World Champions Peter Craven, EriK Gundersen and Per Jonsson pose the question: how many more accolades would they have netted had their careers not been cut cruelly short by the sport's inherent hazards, which will always ride side by side with its gladiators?

Huge crowds abound right up to, and including, the 70s and, perhaps significantly, the amount of youngsters among them are tell-tale reminders of the current struggle for appeal which nowadays faces speedway's authorities in a 21st Century rich with choice of entertainments.

If you once frequented one or more of these defunct venues, you are almost guaranteed to wallow in unbridled nostalgia while fighting back the tears of lost days gone by.

This is definitely no 'feel-good' film for Christmas but would make a wonderful gift of permanent recollections at the forthcoming festive season.

TRACK MEMORIES DVDs

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP DVDS... DRAMA OF THE BIG OCCASIONS

RACING DVDS... HOURS OF THRILLING NON-STOP ACTION FROM THE GREATS

INDIVIDUAL RIDER INTERVIEWS... INCLUDING ACTION FOOTAGE

DVDs ON CLASSIC ERAS OF BRITISH & NATIONAL LEAGUE RACING...

GENERAL DVDs

CINE CLASSICS

PRINTED PAPERBACK BOOKS

eBOOKS... ONLY AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM AMAZON.co.uk

MAGAZINES

BACKTRACK
Final Issue 111 out now!
For fans who loved speedway
in the 1970s & 80s

CLASSIC SPEEDWAY
Final Issue 57 out now!
Launched in May 2008, the glossy quarterly specialising
in the 50s and 60s eras

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