PLYMOUTH Devils boss Ashley Taylor says the city speedway club will consider stepping up security after a ‘malicious’ vandalism attack at their circuit.
Vandals slashed all the panels of the air-filled safety fence at the St Boniface Arena some time between Thursday night and Friday morning.
Devils officials believe the attack, which damaged all 32 panels, was designed to prevent Plymouth from running their normal Friday night meeting at the circuit.
Had the club scheduled a meeting on Friday night, it would have been cancelled, as speedway regulations state racing cannot happen with a safety fence in place.
Instead, Plymouth were away at Edinburgh in a Premier League fixture.Co-promoter Taylor has been repairing the least-damaged of the panels and has borrowed some spare ones from Premier rivals Ipswich Witches, who recently installed a new fence.
Taylor insisted Devils would be running this Friday night, when Plymouth entertain Newcastle in their penultimate meeting of the season.
The borrowed and repaired panels will be installed before the meeting, taken down afterwards and stored in a safe place after the meeting, said Taylor.
Taylor, when asked if someone had a vendetta against the Devils, said he was not aware of upsetting anyone to the extent that they would try and prevent a meeting happening.But he made it clear Devils would consider measures to prevent a similar attack happening again.
He said: “It’s one of those things I can’t explain it was malicious.”But I’ve got no idea why anyone would do it because we don’t go around upsetting people.
We can’t think of anyone who would do this.
“We will get through to the end of the season and then we will have to think about security measures such as infra-red cameras, which is probably the best deterrent you can get.”
Taylor said the Witches’ spare panels were being collected from East Anglia by a supporter and would be available to install ahead of Friday night’s meeting.
Devils will have to find in the region of 15- 20,000 to replace the safety fence, plus whatever it costs to install extra security at the arena.
Taylor, who has spent the past two days working on the fence, said: “We are definitely racing on Friday.”If we had been racing last Friday, we would have had to cancel the meeting.”
The body-blow comes after the club nearly shut down before the start of the season because of financial problems.It was saved at the 11th by a combination of cash raised by fans and financial input by new backers.
References
- ^ Comments (2) (www.plymouthherald.co.uk)
- ^ READ MORE DEVILS HERE (www.plymouthherald.co.uk)