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Flyers brought to book 60 years on
FLEETWOOD Town FC's Highbury home may have changed beyond recognition as the club has risen up the non-League structure – but the ground's most radical redesign came 60 years ago.
For a few brief years from 1948 the club shared its home with the Fleetwood Flyers speedway team, whose track surrounded the football pitch.
Not surprisingly, this was a controversial move and not universally popular, but for dedicated dirt-track fans the Flyers inspired great devotion and memories cherished to this day.
And they had no more diehard a fan than Mike Craven, who has devoted the past 12 years to writing the definitive history of the club, The Flyers Remembered.
Not only does Mike record the club's seasons in division two of speedway's national league in great detail, he has also interviewed as many of those involved in the story as he could track down and describes the Flyers' final fall to earth in a Liverpool courtroom in 1952.
Born in Blackpool, Mike was an eight-year-old living in Waverley Avenue, Fleetwood, when the Flyers were born and, he's proud to admit: "I was instantly hooked".
It was a passion which risked earning him as many enemies as friends, as letters to the Fleetwood Chronicle at the time testified.
"The noise of the engines could be heard all over town. Babies couldn't get to sleep and neither, for that matter, could shift workers, seagoing or otherwise. Windows and greenhouses rattled, not just in the town itself but also on the other side of the River Wyre."
Mike is now 69 and living in Chester, but the roar of the engines has never faded from his memory and he is delighted that the fruits of his labours officially see the light of day on December 1, published by fellow Fylde enthusiast and author Howard Jones.
"It's my first book and it has certainly been a labour of love," he says.
The Flyers Remembered is available directly from the author, Michael Craven at Appleby, 10 Station Lane, Mickle Trafford, Chester CH2 4EH, in A5 softback at 11.99 plus 2 p and p, or in a strictly limited hardback edition of similar size at 17.99 plus 2.
ANDY MOORE
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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