Berwick Bandits roar down to Birmingham in hunt for championship points

Berwick skipper Leon Flint leads Troy Batchelor in a match against Oxford Cheetahs in 2022. Batchelor now races for Birmingham Brummies. Picture: Taz McDougall

Birmingham, who have won only once in 11 outings in all competitions this season, unveiled new signings ex-Grand Prix rider Troy Batchelor and 18-year-old Brit Sam Hagon on Monday.

Australian Batchelor has found himself without a club this season after a couple of indifferent years in both the Championship and Premiership, but on his day the 35-year-old remains a potent scorer.

Hagon is currently scoring well in the National Development League for Belle Vue and in the Polish under-24 league.

Leicester supremo Stewart Dickson, who has been brought in as team manager by the Birmingham ownership, has rung the changes in a team whose only success in 2023 was on the road at Plymouth.

Australian James Pearson and injured second string James Wright are the men to make way.

Berwick skipper Leon Flint returns to the track where he exploded from the youth ranks and into the National League as a 15-year-old back in 2018.

By the end of that debut season he was averaging just under nine points a match, while Perry Barr was also the scene of his British Under-21 triumph last season, winning all five main meeting races and the final in style.

On Wednesday he will wear the number five race jacket as Bandits team manager Scott Courtney realigns the pairings.

Rory Schlein has recovered from the back spasms which sidelined him last week and has already tasted success at Birmingham this season, scoring paid 10 as guest for Josh Pickering in the Edinburgh Monarchs’ win last month, Jacob Hook also scoring 8+2 that night before being snapped up by Berwick following his release by the Monarchs.

Thomas Jorgensen rides at two, while Jye Etheridge and Jonas Knudsen, who was on Birmingham’s radar as a teenager but hasn’t raced competitively at Perry Barr, continue their key engine room partnership.

“It’s not about who Birmingham have signed or what their new team manager is saying, it’s about how we perform on the night,” Courtney said.

“Everyone knows his job. There are match-ups and battles throughout the 15 heats and it is a question of winning those both individually and as a team.”