LAKESIDE Hammers are away to the current Sky Sports Elite League leaders, the Swindon Robins on Thursday in an important League match.The Hammers fans will then need to wait until Monday 20th July for their next home League match following a period of almost a month without racing at their Arena-Essex Raceway due to the recent staging of the British Grand Prix in the Millennium Stadium Cardiff and the Speedway World Cup, which takes place over the next week.

LAKESIDE Hammers are away to the current Sky Sports Elite League leaders, the Swindon Robins on Thursday in an important League match.

The Hammers fans will then need to wait until Monday 20th July for their next home League match following a period of almost a month without racing at their Arena-Essex Raceway due to the recent staging of the British Grand Prix in the Millennium Stadium Cardiff and the Speedway World Cup, which takes place over the next week.

The match on 20th, against the Poole Pirates, starts a very busy period for the Club, which sees them due to race three home and two away League matches in the space of just 12 days.

On 24th July they face the Robins again but this time at the Arena-Essex Raceway. The next day, Saturday 25th, they then travel down to the Sussex coast to face the Eastbourne Eagles. The following Monday, 27th July, in a change of fixture, they now are away to the Coventry Bees in a match that is scheduled to be shown live on Sky Sports. The busy end of July period ends on 31st with another home League match for the Hammers, against the Belle Vue Aces.

As stated by the Club in its last Press Release on Friday 3rd July youngsters will be able to see these three home matches at reduced rates. On 20th July, for the Poole match, all children up to the age of 16 with be given free entry and then for the matches on 24th and 31st children aged from 6 to 16 will be charged an admission fee of just �1 with children under the age of 6 being allowed free entry.

Jon Cook the Hammers Team Manager and Co-Promoter states: “These six League matches to come in July will all be important for the Club. We are currently in fourth place in the League table, equal on points with Coventry, but above them due to our better racing points differential.

“It is vital that we win these three home meetings, along with the further four in August, and pick up points from the three away matches if we are to finish the League campaign in the top four, which will give us a place in the League Play-off's. July will see us complete our away League matches so with a further four home matches to come during August our fate is in our own hands.

Cook concluded: “I would like to confirm to our supporters that even though our away match against the Coventry Bees has been brought forward from Friday 21st August to Monday 27th July the Bees will still be coming to our Raceway on Saturday 22nd August.”

Thursday's match away at Swindon will once again see the Hammers line up without Stuart Robson, who re-broke a finger in a meeting in France recently. His place will be taken by Jason Lyons, who rides for Birmingham in the Premier League. Lyons scored paid nine points when he replaced Robson in the match away at Belle Vue at the end of last month that saw the Hammers come away from Manchester with one League point.

Hammers riders Jonas Davidsson and Kauko Nieminen have been in fine form on an individual level recently and that has seen them both qualify for the Grand Prix Challenge Final, which is due to take place at Coventry on 18th September, from which the top three riders on that night will gain automatic qualification to the 2010 Grand Prix Series.