The Islands’ speedway riders take a break from team action this Thursday (17 May) and look instead for individual glory as the club stage the annual Vince Mapley Memorial Trophy at the Andrew Younie Smallbrook Stadium in Ryde.
Originally planned to be the opening meeting of the 2018 season in April, bad weather forced its cancellation and the Warriors promoters were quick to re-schedule the event. Warriors’ co-promoter Barry Bishop was sincere in his acknowledgement of Mapley’s influence on himself and fellow co-promoter Martin Widman as they prepared to re-launch speedway on the Island back in 2015/16. He said, “We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Vince and his family. They were so supportive of our plans. It is only right that we honour the memory of a man who over the period of our association was a real inspiration to Martin and I. Vince was a determined and dedicated speedway man so we will always try an assemble a line up that reflects those values and we believe we have the riders to serve up another night of close quarter action this week”.
For the third staging of the trophy home number one Ben Morley who has been in such a rich vein of form will probably start as favourite, but after that it is very even amongst the twelve strong field and predicting podium spots much more difficult.
The line up in draw order is as follows: Kelsey Dugard, Sam Woolley, Shaun Tedham, Ben Hopwood, Tom Woolley, Callum Walker, Ben Morley, Danno Verge, Chris Widman, Scott Campos, Jamie Sealey and Alfie Bowtell.
Usual admission arrangements apply with gates opening at 5.30 pm and tapes up on the first heat at 7.00 pm.