When Eagles Dared – New Book!

A Whimsical Account from the terraces behind Board 51 (and lurking at tracks elsewhere) of a Triumphant Eastbourne Speedway season with ultimate success missed by a merest Cat’s Whisker that features those handlebar heroes: Nicki, Floppy, Mooro, Deano, Watty, Shieldsy plus bosses, Cooky and Geery, and a vital yet innumerable cast of others – the whole experience crowned with the unique aural accompaniment of MC KC, oh, and not forgetting our own inimitable “Arena track specialist” Mr Steen Jensen…

Author: Jeff Scott
172pages Paperback 158 Photos £10.00 Available Now!

It was a season that had everything. Fantastic races, routine races, falls, failed ambitions, injuries, fights, controversy, laughter, despair, weird decisions, tantrums, a rich tapestry of speedway people on and off the terraces – and, of course, a dinner dance.

When Eagles Dared is a month-by-month account of the 2005 season which featured an impressive number of Eastbourne Eagles fixtures – probably more than any other speedway club raced in any British league that year.

Eastbourne (Jeff Scott’s local side) has a genuine sense of community that can’t be easily faked. The racing is consistently good to exciting, the atmosphere is special, and there’s traditional craftsmanship practised. Like any great British speedway club, Eastbourne has its own past and present pantheon of “handlebar heroes”, riders who matter-of-factly put their lives on the line every week and every time they race. All this just to earn a living and to provide our weekly speedway entertainment.

In a sense, When Eagles Dared could be about the experience of supporting any speedway club or could cover any season. As fans we’re perpetually caught on the outside of what really happens in our club. We try to glean information from what we read in the press, the programme and look at, if we dare, on the Internet. And then there’s what we hear on the terraces and in the bar: that mix of blind optimism, despair, fiction presented as fact, only seeing what you want to see, complaints and mickey taking. We don’t have the inside scoop or know the half of it so we have to make presumptions – often incorrect ones – about motives and actions and mine a rich seam of half-truths, rumours, and innuendo. This book, in fact, describes what it’s like for any sort of sports fan to follow their own particular club – whether speedway or not.

When Eagles Dared was conceived and written as a companion to Jeff Scott’s successful first book, Showered in Shale.