Tapes up or time's up? Newcastle Speedway hosts what is likely to be its final race after 92 years
Video report by Simon O'Rourke
The tapes may have gone up for the last time after nearly 100 years of speedway for the Newcastle Diamonds.
The club is up for sale, but there are currently no potential buyers and the organisation is set to disappear from the sporting map this autumn.
On Sunday (19 September), the Diamonds lost by a point to the Birmingham Brummies in what is likely to be the last ever speedway meeting staged at Brough Park.
Rob Grant, former co-promoter at Newcastle Diamonds
Last week, the club announced it was planning for this final meeting as the search for a new buyer was failing.
Rob Grant managed the club alongside Dave Tattum - a stalwart in speedway promotion.
On Sunday morning, the same day as the final meeting at Brough Park, the club announced Dave Tattum had passed away aged 64.
In a statement, the team said they were "extremely shocked and saddened" by Tattum's untimely passing.
Newcastle Speedway goes back 92 years, with Brough Park being the country's longest running speedway venue.
That rich history lent itself to nurturing sporting legends and was home to world champions Ivan Mauger, Ole Olsen, Anders Michanek and Nicki Pederson.
However, with faltering crowd numbers, and a global pandemic to contend with, management say they have struggled recently.
Newcastle was running three teams: the Diamonds, the Gems and the Sapphires. In the summer, the club dropped the Gems because it could no longer afford the overheads of running three teams.
It is a problem that has hit the sport more widely than Newcastle alone with Somerset Rebels announcing their closure earlier this year too.