Dick Barrie's
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My Top Ten Glasgow Tigers

In preface, I should explain that I was a Tigers' fan for forty years, and saw each of these guys riding, racing and giving their all over a number of seasons for the Stripes. I have not considered including riders who flitted but briefly over the Glasgow scene, however good or great they had been before coming to Glasgow (or would go on to be elsewhere).

Had their careers with the Tigers been longer, I would have certainly considered the claims of great riders such as EGON MULLER, DAVID BLACKBURN, MITCH SHIRRA, JASON LYONS and/or ROBERT NAGY. But these guys were all short-term Tigers, and to be included in a true Top Ten, I feel there has to be a longer period of dedicated service, so I elect (after great thought):

1. STEVE LAWSON While the rest of this list is more or less chronological, I make no excuses for putting "Super Steve" on the very top! Other Tigers might have had greater glory, won more individual honours, but no-one who really knows how really bad the Tigers were in Steve's time can fail to realise how great his achievements were! Also, he's just so nice a guy! Top man in the league year after year, he often outscored all his team-mates put together at away matches - not just for a few brief months, but year after year for a decade! "Sausage" scored so highly for the club (and remember his points, as were all the Tigers, for the whole of 1987 have been struck from official records) his figures still transcend any other NL rider before or since - and this was all achieved at four very different home tracks! Suffice to say, Steve Lawson joined the Tigers early in 1978, and never raced for any other club. He is the greatest Tiger of them all. Wanna argue?

2. JUNIOR BAINBRIDGE First time I went to see the Tigers - first time I saw speedway, in fact -- Junior was the big attraction. Although Will Lowther top-scored in the match, it was Junior - in a flurry of terrific third-bend turns, tantrums and tumbles - who took my breath away, and drew me back the following Wednesday night! In time, he succeeded Lowther as club captain, but could never be relied upon to top the score-charts. A plague of gremlins usually offered him three wins and a stoppage (which was regularly followed by some dramatic helmet-football) but won him the hearts of the White City public. When the hard times hit home, and he was sold to Ipswich after the 1953 season, my heart (if not broken) was very badly bent. One of my long-term regrets was that, despite regular visits to Australia over the years, I never met him to talk to. News of his death in the past year means I never will - but his memory will live with me forever.

3. TOMMY MILLER They called him "Atomic Tommy" and he came from nowhere to zoom right to the top in a year and less. I first saw him as a second-half wobbler at the end of 1949, but he was a reserve when 1950 came around, in the team proper within the first month - and had bagged a couple of maximums and the track record by June! For the next three seasons, wee Tommy was the league's brightest star, succeeding Jack Young and Ken LeBreton (both also with Scottish tracks, of course) by the end of 1951. His mastery was total, it seemed - if he dropped a point, it was big news -- but after being sold on (to Motherwell, the club of his choice) in 1954, his descent was as sudden as his coming. Never accepted by the Eagles' fans, he moved to Coventry, then Oxford - but the new tyre regulations, and failing finances within the sport, saw Tommy out of racing by 1956. Plagued by ill-health, he died in the late 'sixties, having served one year (1964) as a referee, during the "black" PL administration's year of glory.

4. KEN McKINLAY Such a slow developer - yet, after he moved on, what a superb career! At the club from 1948, it took over a year for "Hurri-Ken" (oh, these Hoskinisms!) to get a run at reserve - usually alternating for last place with Alf McIntosh - and didn't really get into the team proper until 1950. Another three seasons took Ken to the third heat-leader's spot in Coronation year, and sadly - in the year he was at last installed as Glasgow's No 1 - the club folded after just three meetings in '54! So on he went, to Leicester, Coventry, West Ham and greatness. Had the club, and the sport prospered in the '50's, who knows - "Auld Mac" (as we knew him in later years) could have stayed to become the Greatest Tiger Of Them All.

5. CHARLIE MONK Was he as good as his legend insists? For a year or so in the mid-sixties, yes! Lean, mean and hungry, he rolled into the White City on Trevor Redmond's band-wagon for the revival year of 1964, had a great year at PL level (although matched point-for-point by Geordie Hunter at Edinburgh and Ivan Mauger of Newcastle). It was the next year that made the legend. The amalgamation of the sport threw riders against one another at all levels, and with Mauger sidelined from early on, it was to Monk and Hunter (again) the fans of the former "big-league" tracks turned to marvel at, as the brash newcomers took on, and matched, their established stars. That year Charlie won the Easter Trophy at West Ham, the FIM Internationale at Wimbleon and was carrying all before him when he lost out to greater experience in an awkward moment at the very last hurdle before a wide-open World Final he could very well have won as well. If any incident can now be seen as the watershed to level off his rise to full-time superstardom (outside Glasgow) that was it. He stayed on another year or two, tried Sheffield, came back to Hampden, moved to Halifax, then (startlingly) Edinburgh before a final, desultory year at Barrow. A droll comic with a devastating deadpan delivery, Charlie was more-popular in the dressing-room than his publicity suggested - but without doubt, his year of years in 1965 puts him very high on the shelf reserved for true Tigers' icons.

6. JIM McMILLAN When I was scrabbling about the pits, fuelling Bert Hankins' bike, baby-faced Jim was providing the same service for uncles Doug and Willie Templeton. Father Dan insisted he "finish his time" as a sheet-metal worker before trying his hand at speedway, so Jim was 21 before he was allowed to haul Doug's bike to Cowdenbeath during the winter of 1965/6. A summer spent travelling with the Tigers, grabbing such second-half experience as came his way was followed by a team place, and a rise to the top as meteoric as that of Tommy Miller, fifteen years earlier! A heat-leader and British Lions' tourist after his first full season in the side, "Jimmy Mac" remained faithful to the cause from White City to Coatbridge, via Hampden Park - and led the squad with popular dignity throughout. Hull and Wolverhampton saw his great years, and he was also a popular leader of the Berwick cause in the 'eighties, although one final year back in the Stripes at Craighead Park was probably a mistake. Later a team manager for Berwick and Glasgow (at Shawfield) he is always a popular visitor to all the northern tracks when in town.

7. BOBBY BEATON A teenager at White City in 1968, when not many teenagers were involved in speedway, Bobby might well have achieved even greater stature in the sport over the years had he not been required to play second fiddle to an older, even-higher-rated star (McMillan, Briggs, Mauger, et al) wherever he rode. Pawky, brave and bold, Bobby in his prime, his little leg trailing backwards, was one of speedway's finest spectacles throughout the '70's. To belittle Bobby as having had a wealthy father who provided good start-up equipment is more than unfair, as he quickly established himself as his own man - while always remaining faithful to his roots by never living anywhere outside Lanarkshire, despite the travelling burden this would impose during a 20-year career. His final match for the Tigers (to whom he returned late in his career) was at Hackney in March, 1988 - ironically ending his club career at the very moment in time that the great Shawfield revival began.

8. KENNY McKINNA I recall two moments concerning Kenny. Very early on in his first season, while he was still concentrating on Scottish Junior League racing, I told Mike Hunter that this would be the next great Scottish star - the one who might prove that "Scottish stardom" wasn't just aspiring to be an NL heat-leader. Mike was later kind enough to write about that conversation, about the time Kenny was wearing the No 1 race-jacket for Belle Vue. The other magic moment - after his major achievements with the big-league Aces and two New Zealand winters - came in 1988, in early spring. Although he had actually agreed to re-join the Tigers weeks earlier, the secret had been kept well-wrapped until a pre-season social at Shawfield, when (amid uproar, dancing on the tables, total chaos and a 700% rise in season-ticket sales) the fans took on board the hard-to-believe fact that "Scotland's No 1" was coming home - at the peak of his career.

9. SHANE BOWES It was track-shop man Mick Gregory who tipped me off about Shane - proving that at least some track-shop guys know a bit about speedway - when he phoned to tell me of Newcastle's sudden closure. In about thirty minutes, I had cleared matters with the league offices, tracked Shane to Gary Havelock's home at Yarm and asked him to drive up to see Shawfield (where the track was still being built) the next day. What really impressed me about this 17-year-old was that I emphasised he would not be guaranteed a team place, but would have to race for it against up to half-a-dozen others, yet he hesitated not a moment in asking for the pen, and where to sign! He stayed the distance, of course, winning not only his team-place, but the hearts of the fans and even became club captain a few years later. He also does great barbies at his Adelaide home - featuring the biggest shrimps I have ever seen! One (printable) funny story was that, when signing up as a Tiger, he told me that the thought a pal of his father's might have raced in Scotland at one time. "Oh really? Would I know him?" I said. "Oh, I don't suppose so" said the lad. "His name's Charlie Monk……"

10. JAMES GRIEVES Another local lad who began as a Tiger, moved away and came back as a star. When we were building the speedway facilities into Shawfield, Jim Grieves Senior was a regular helper among so many unsung -- later unthanked -- heroes and heroines who toiled long and hard that cold, wet winter. One week, he turned up in a van with a small bike in the back - "for the lad" he explained. The "lad" later progressed to riding around, getting progressively faster and steadier, during our intervals before reaching the age of taking part in league racing. Currently the top Scot in speedway (ooh, have I said something controversial?) our nation's top rider, and hopefully a beacon to guide the next generation of kids to on-track stardom.

Not easy, picking out only ten! If it gives any consolations to champions of their cause, a "mention in dispatches" must also be given to the likes of BUCK RYAN, DAVID WALSH, MICK POWELL, CHARLIE McKINNA, MAURY MATTINGLY, JIM BEATON and WILLIE TEMPLETON. They came awfully close to getting in……….

DICK BARRIE - 20.2.01