Meet the Riders Night - Stewart Dickson
(Posted 06/03/08)

When planning for 2008 they looked at some of the old faces but they decided they wanted to go down a different route. Taking away the bonus point probably helps Glasgow and the way they have built this year in Stewart's opinion. 

They had seen Mitchell ride in the flesh and he has a nice style.  Although they have not yet seen Josh ride in the flesh they have seen plenty of taped action and had good reports. 

It remains to be seen if they are really ready to go yet and score points, the thought was that perhaps they might have benefited from another 9 months in Australia but Glasgow have had their fingers burned that way before when they were well down the road with Cory Gathercole but lost out to big money after giving the extra time and the concern was that they might loose out again if they waited. 

At the Press call today there was understandably a lot of attention focusing on the two new faces.  Everyone seems to be excited to see how they will do on track and they are young and eager (when Stewart called Mitchell to make sure he had everything packed including helmet colours, Mitchell advised he didn’t have a black and white one but thought he might not need it to start with!) but they have to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. It is up to the older more experienced riders to take the pressure off them.

They first saw Mitchell riding second half and King’s Lynn last season and had a chat with him. A couple of weeks later they saw him ride second half again at Mildenhall and were then introduced to his family and told them all about Glasgow. 

The Glasgow promotion did push for the average for Australian riders coming over to be reduced to 5 and they were pleased when the conference accepted the idea. 

Although Tigers have on paper ended up with short top end fire power they wanted to try and make sure one of the young Australians started in the reserve berth.  Trent has more than shown he is capable of the challenge ahead after stepping up to the plate last season and the pressure is still on him to improve further but also on Robert to follow Trent’s example from last year and step up to the mark. 

There are some tough early fixtures for the Tigers in the league and they will have a bit of an unknown when they first face Berwick in the PT in a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, they will be trying to get all the riders as much track time as possible at Ashfield as it is very important  to win all home meetings. 

In response to the comment that Tigers could look forward to 2009 Stewart agreed but said for now it was important not to be seen as soft touches this year. 

On the individual riders for 2008, if Shane can carry on doing what he did last year you cannot ask for anything more.  Trent has been very loyal and is very good round Ashfield. Robert knows he has to take a step up this season whilst Ross is capable of doing the same especially riding with Shane. Lee will make sure no one bullies the younger riders!

Stewart did say in front of witnesses that he would be at all away tracks this year…..