Long Eaton

motorcycle speedway Motorcycle speedway, usually referred to simply as speedway, is a motorcycle sport involving four and sometimes up to six riders competing over four clockwise, anti-clockwise laps of an oval circuit. The motorcycles are specialist machines that ...

teams operated from 1950 until 1997 in

Long Eaton Long Eaton is a town in the Erewash district of Derbyshire, England, just north of the River Trent, about south-west of Nottingham and some 8½ miles (13.7 km) south-east of Derby. The town population was 37,760 at the 2011 census. It ...

, England. Teams have raced at the

Long Eaton Stadium Long Eaton Stadium, previously the Recreation Ground, was a multi-use sports ground in Long Eaton, Derbyshire that staged cricket, cycling, football, greyhound racing and speedway. Cricket The first recorded match on the ground was in 1887, whe ...

as the Long Eaton Archers, Long Eaton Rangers, Nottingham Outlaws and the Long Eaton Invaders. The Invaders returned in 2011, with home meetings taking place at the

Leicester Lions Leicester Lions are a speedway team which originally operated from 1968 until 1983.Bamford, R & Jarvis J.(2001). ''Homes of British Speedway''. The club returned to speedway for the 2011 Premier League season, moving up to the Elite League ...

' track.

History

Speedway events had been hosted at Long Eaton from as early as 1929, the first meeting being on 18 May 1929. The team were founder members of the

1929 Speedway English Dirt Track League The 1929 English Dirt Track League was the inaugural season of speedway in the United Kingdom for Northern English teams. There was also a Southern League called the 1929 Speedway Southern League that started during the same year. Summary The s ...

but withdrew and had their results expunged. The ''

Derby Evening Telegraph The ''Derby Telegraph'', formerly the ''Derby Evening Telegraph'', is a daily tabloid newspaper distributed in the Derby area of England. Stories produced by the Derby Telegraph team are published online under the Derbyshire Live brand. Histor ...

'' described the oval circuit as having four laps to the mile, with straights and the bends 'to allow broadsiding at 60 mph'. The last meeting of this era was on 10 June 1930. Long eaton invaders site today

Speedway events returned to Long Eaton in 1950 with a team initially called the "Archers". The team operated until 1953 when the promotion closed. The "Archers" name was again used when the track re-opened in 1963 until it closed again at the end of the 1967 season. In 1969 the track re-opened with the team named "Rangers" until 1974 when the "Archers" name was used for one more season. The track opened again in 1979 and were called the "Nottingham Outlaws" but closed at the end of the 1980 season. Another revival followed in 1982 as the team was again re-branded, but this time as the "Long Eaton Invaders" – the name was chosen due to the popularity of the ''

Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. ''Space Invaders'' was the first fixed shooter and ...

'' arcade game at that time. The Invaders won the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

Championship in 1984 and the

Premier League Four-Team Championship The Premier League Four-Team Championship was a contest between teams competing in the Premier League in the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is ...

in 1997. In early 1998 it was announced that the stadium was to be sold for housing development and the club would have to vacate immediately. The proposed development never took place, and there was an unsuccessful attempt to reopen the site for speedway racing in 2005. The site was later approved for a residential development with public open spaces by Erewash Borough Council, and is now a housing estate. The Long Eaton Invaders returned in 2011, competing in the amateur status Midland League, sharing the

' new track in

Beaumont Park Stadium Beaumont Park Stadium or the Pidcock Motorcycles Arena for sponsorship purposes is a sports stadium on Beaumont Park, Leicester. The stadium is mainly used for motorcycle speedway and is the home track for the Leicester Lions. At the meeting of ...

for home matches. They ended the 2011 season as Midland League champions. They continued to compete in the junior leagues until 2016.

Season summary

References

External links

Long Eaton Invaders
official website
Close up Satellite image of derelict stadium
{{coord, 52, 53, 56, N, 1, 15, 41, W, region:GB-LND_type:landmark_source:dewiki, display=title Speedway Sport in Derbyshire British speedway teams