Few could have predicted success would follow success for Peterborough Panthers in the 1990s

It was a decade of victory parades, civic receptions and 10 seasons that re-wrote the club’s history.

​If Panthers fans want to find hope emerging from despair in the past they only need to wind the clock back to the late 1980s.

​Chemical trader David Hawkins became the sole owner of Panthers in May, 1988 – and at the end of his first season in charge he was met with newspaper headlines screaming: “Question mark over speedway future.”

The East of England Agricultural Society revealed they had applied for planning permission for a multi-million pound housing development around the perimeter of the Showground and city councillor Mrs. Audrey Chalmers warned: “The result of the planning application will most probably be the loss of speedway to Peterborough.”

Promoter Hawkins promised at the time: “We would certainly look around for another site – but I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

It didn’t, but here we are, some 35 years later, and time is closing in on what many fear will be the last speedway meeting at the Showground.

PANTHERS IN PERIL

Hawkins is now a long-forgotten figure in the continuing story of the Panthers.

He should have left a legacy, but his lack of foresight and prudence landed Panthers in the most perilous position the club had ever been in.

Midway through the 1991 season he got rid off three of the club’s big-hitters, Swedish international Rickard Hellsen moved to Long Eaton; Australian Scott Norman joined Wolverhampton in a £10,000 transfer; and Denmark’s Frank Andersen went on loan to another top-flight club, Belle Vue for the rest of the season.

It was a desperate fund-raising, cost-cutting exercise and the British Speedway Promoters’ Association held an emergency meeting with Hawkins and insisted he followed new financial guidelines to survive which included the remaining riders taking a wage cut to keep their jobs.

For the first time in their history, Panthers finished the season at the bottom of the table and at the end of October, Hawkins officially put the club up for sal, advertising its availability in the speedway press. His Peterborough promoting company Eastclub Limited was wound up on October 31.

Despite all the budgetary changes the club had run into such deep financial trouble that there was no future under Hawkins’ tenure and his announcement only pre-empted the decision of the sport’s governing body, the Speedway Control Board, to take even more drastic action, basically barring Hawkins from having any further promoting involvement in the sport.

The SCB manager John Eglese explained: “Taking into account all the events surrounding Peterborough Speedway this year, we have informed Mr. Hawkins the renewal of the licence has been turned down.”

With Hawkins’ departure from speedway no-one could have envisaged that it would be the signal for the most successful period in Peterborough’s long history – as they won TWELVE major trophies in the last eight years of the old millennium.

TO THE RESCUE

Travel agent James Easter and journalist Peter Oakes had joined forces to look for a new club to take over.

Their initial plan was to add a new attraction on Blackpool’s Golden Mile and they had successful talks with the owners of the greyhound stadium, barely a stone’s throw from the sweeping promenade where visitor numbers would top 20 million during the summer.

Negotiations were quickly completed with the landlords of the venue, which also played host to rugby league, and approaches were made to the town’s planners but, unexpectedly, the confidential response was that the venture would not get off the ground.

Messrs Easter and Oakes started looking elsewhere for another promoting project and it was Easter who initially suggested looking at resurrecting Peterborough after its 1991 demise.

The BSPA accepted their proposals and Easter disclosed that he had been interested in taking over the Panthers since former owner Martin Roger put it on the market in 1988.

Rogers said: “I had virtually agreed a deal with Martin when David Hawkins put in a bigger offer and I withdrew. I approached Hawkins on several occasions, but never had any meaningful talks because our respective valuations were worlds apart.”

Easter resumed contact with Hawkins at the end of 1991 but revealed: “I found out I had been negotiating for assets he didn’t own. By then his promoting licence had been withdrawn and the assets taken over by the BSPA.”

AWESOME AUSSIE ARRIVES

The potential new owners deposited £10,000 with the authorities as a guarantee, but had to assemble a new team from scratch.

First signing was Australian Stephen Davies and a second Panthers’ favourite, ex-skipper Mick Poole, was added along with 16-year-old Jason Crump, virtually unknown other than as the son of ex-World Finalist and Australian World Cup winner Phil Crump.

Crump’s capture attracted attention only because of his family pedigree as his grandfather Neil Street had been an Australian international and a successful national manager.

Crump recalled: “I had had a few second half rides at Poole in 1991 and really wanted to go to Exeter because that was where my grandparents lived.

“But the Falcons owner didn’t think I was good enough to come into the team on an assessed average. He thought I would be treated as an Australian, but the Peterborough bosses knew I had been born in England and I took out a British licence which meant I came into the Panthers’ team on a very low assessed average.”

It was a masterstroke by the new promotion and a major key to the club’s immediate success.

The opening meeting saw the Panthers beat touring Swedish side Rospiggarna 49-41 and the big crowd were introduced to a team of three old boys (Davies, Poole and Rod Colquhoun) and new faces Paul Whittaker, coming back from a serious injury, locally-based Mark Blackbird who had ridden for Long Eaton the previous year, Crump and fellow teenage reserve Paul Hurry.

Another Showground stalwart, Kevin Hawkins, who had only hung up his leathers after failing to agree terms with his namesake, promoter David, in 1990, was back as team manager and the backroom staff was full of experience and knowledge.

Even so the year wasn’t without its bumps. The new regime lost their second home match in the early season Gold Cup competition to Mildenhall, who hadn’t won a match, and a knot of fans literally circled one of the promotional team to accuse them of building a team that would be even worse than its predecessors and was destined to end up with a second successive wooden spoon!

CHAMPIONS!

It never worked out that way and, by the end of their first season, with only one team change as Neville Tatum replaced Whittaker, Panthers had been crowned league champions for the first time in the club’s history - and also won the treble, adding the Knockout Cup and the Four Team Championship to the honours list.

Three big titles that were the first tangible signs of the success that would follow.

While Easter sold his 50% of the promotion (to Czech Republic rider Vaclav Verner, who was also the club’s 1992 coach) after only 12 months, success followed success and, by the end of the century Panthers had been league champions a further three times (winning the third-tier league competition in 1997, the Second Division again in 1998 and, remarkably, the top-flight title in 1999).

HOWE’S THAT!

Amazingly, one rider featured as a regular in the teams in each of those three years. David Howe began his Peterborough connection as a 14-year-old mascot and by the time he was celebrating his 18th birthday he had helped a Panthers team win the third, second and first division league titles!

The 90s produced a total of 12 different team trophies and titles and transformed Panthers from also rans to one of the most successful clubs in speedway history.

There were also near misses and individual successes that ensured the nineties was an era never to be forgotten.

You only have to look at the record books to see that victories followed victories as Panthers won major titles in 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998 and 1999.

They also paraded some of the world’s top riders in their colours, including that raw schoolboy Jason Crump who left at the end of his rookie season, but returned in 1996 (after the Panthers paid a then record £30,000 transfer fee to bring him back) and again in 1999 after a season’s break.

Crump, who first qualified for the Grand Prix series as a Panther in 1996, went on to dominate in the early years of the new millennium, winning the world title in 2004, 2006 and 2009.

But Crump wasn’t the only household name who wore the Peterborough body colour in the nineties and the success born in

the nineties would continue right up until as recently as 2021 as the final part of our history of Peterborough speedway will explain next week.