belle vue ACES speedway
FOLLOW US ONLINE twitter . com / sportinprofile
Belle Vue Rentruck Aces Speedway
Article provided by Hayley Bromley
I may be wrong in assuming , but when Belle Vue revealed their team and ambitions for the 2015 season there was already the sense early on that the club had something special on the cards .
Granted it wasn ’ t the best start to the year - with one rain-off and three consecutive losses - but once the boys found their mojo , they were most unwilling to see their miserable fortunes continue .
Bar one slip up , their home form throughout 2015 has been second to none while away from home , while not flawless , they ’ ve been anything but a disappointment to their fans and bosses .
“ Right now there ’ s a very positive feel around the club and it ’ s a feeling we ’ ve not experienced for a good ten years now ,” says COO Chris Morton . “ But when you ’ re winning it ’ s hard not to feel good !
“ I often say it ’ s all about winning and as we got past the season ’ s half way point the team was really starting to pull together and for the last eight to ten meetings or so , we ’ ve really been on it .
“ The whole mentality of the club , and the riders , has changed this year and that ’ s something you can really sense around the pits . The will to win has been particularly palpable since last Monday .
“ We ’ ve waited a long time for a lot of things , from the play offs to the new stadium , and although we started off this regime nearly ten years ago we ’ ve had no choice but to be reasonably patient .
“ Having said that , our target wasn ’ t merely to just get into the play offs . This is the start of the next chapter . There ’ s no sense of being in the play offs without the better intention of wanting to win .
“ We ’ ve tried to keep our goals realistic as we have gone along and now that we have delivered on our aim to reach the play offs , clearly our next ambition is to qualify for the final .”
As I ’ ve previously alluded , the start of the new year rang out with an all too familiar tone for the Rentruck Aces . Back to back defeats on the road had many fans shaking their heads in despair .
A lot were left wondering if the changes - or in some areas , lack of changes - wrought out by the management over the winter would be effective enough to see the struggling squad bounce back .
Hopefully now the answer is clear , with the club sitting pretty amongst the title contenders , but as far as Morton is concerned , a slow start doesn ’ t necessarily precede a bad season .
He said : “ I suppose the best way to describe this year is that it has been a slow burner but with the changes we ’ ve made and the shift in the dynamic of the team , maybe that ’ s how it needed to be .
“ I ’ ve always maintained that this league is a highly competitive one . All eight teams started this season roughly on equal footing with squads of riders of similar strengths and abilities .
“ But what separates the top four from the rest is how they manage their progress and maintain good form . I ’ m not saying that ’ s the only element of a good campaign , but maybe the most crucial .
“ The most significant change I feel we ’ ve made was bringing Mark Lemon on board as our new manager and that in itself was an adjustment all parties concerned required time to get used to .
“ We have riders at this club who have been with us for what has been the better part of a three-year programme where
28