LONG-TIME Sittingbourne AC Associates Crusaders Speedway track supremo Graham Arnold believes the club is in good shape, despite winning just once during their first league campaign in nine years.

Arnold went with current teenage protégés Mark and Aaron Baseby up to Mildenhall in Suffolk to take in the Bronze Helmet championship after Crusaders' last home match of the season.

Few could have judged proceedings with a more informed eye, nor indeed with more pride, when two products of Arnold’s training schools, James Courtney and Lewis Bridger, met in the final of the prestigious Conference individual event.

Arnold said: "Jamie Courtney came to stay with me when he just seven or eight when his father wanted him to get started in the sport. Similarly, Lewis Bridger was out there riding on the 125cc bikes on our mini-track at just about the same age.

"To see them racing against each other for something like the Bronze Helmet is a tremendous advert for our training facilities and a huge fillip for the club as a whole.

"And of course, Jamie and Lewis are following in the footsteps of other youngsters like World Under-21 Championship finalist, Daniel King and his elder brother Jason, not to mention our greatest ever discovery, 2000 World Champ Mark Loram.

"It really is a great thrill to see their development and that of our current crop of young Crusaders like the Baseby brothers, Dan Blake, Jordan Frampton, James Theobald and the rest. It shows the enormous value to the sport of Speedway as a whole of our prime business at the Old Gun Site."