Charity begins in Southport as Niall finds it better to give than polish his motorbikes, but he still finds time to heap loads of pressure on Brit riders going for world titles in 2010
Unless I can count taking old trainers to the recycle skip at Tesco or dumping my loft junk in the doorway of Age Concern then I don’t suppose I do a great deal of charity work. I do help Riders For Health with the British Grand Prix ride-in but then that’s me having fun on motorbikes so it probably doesn’t count, and I suppose neither does buying lottery tickets because my real motive there is to win millions to blow on even more bikes.
But I’m trying to be a better person in 2010 and I’ve started by helping out Southport based Plantec Holdings. I got to know this company (run by friendly bikers) a few years ago when they sponsored Rizla Suzuki. They’re basically a one-stop shop for bikers and insurers who try to get claims processed quickly and efficiently.
One of the boss men, Lee Evans contacted me recently to help out with one of their local charities, ‘SUAG’. The Spinal Unit Action Group, also in Southport, is a residential home for patients in the North West that have spinal injuries and need rehabilitation and accommodation.
This organisation struck a chord with me as my best friend Craig Feeney was paralysed in 1977 after crashing his RD250 ‘Ham Yam’. He was only seventeen at the time and after being discharged from hospital it was pretty much down to him and his family to cope – a Scottish SUAG back then would have been an absolute godsend.
Plantec have been renovating parts of the SUAG building so I went along to open their new dining room, scoff a few vol-au-vents and meet the staff and residents. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the patients were nothing but super-positive and a true inspiration. I chatted to two middle-aged bikers in wheelchairs although neither had been involved in biking accidents.
One lad had left the UK for a welding career in Australia when, during his stopover in Singapore he dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool and spent the next three months in hospital. His life certainly changed forever and he never did make it to Oz. Another chap was a Lancashire trucker who fell backwards over some boxes on his trailer, landed awkwardly and that was that. He told me just the week before he had dropped a trailer at haulage contractors Fogartys of Blackburn where he met a cheeky teenager called Carl. I’ll let you guess which one appears to be the happiest now. Ironically the patients sent me home that evening feeling uplifted and more grateful than ever for the privileged life I lead. Charity work might be the future.
And continuing with a positive theme I reckon 2010 is going to be one of the most exciting seasons yet for race fans in the UK. We might not have JT in MotoGP but we do have double GP winner Bradley Smith poised to win the 125cc title (backed up by Danny Webb) and hopefully by now Scott Redding locked into a Moto2 deal. This new World Championship is wide open and it’s impossible to say which rider or bike will be first or last. I think there could be some serious money to be made here with a crafty wager on an unknown outsider. And then we have the seven and a half Brits on factory bikes in WSB (OK Guintolli is French but we like him and he lives in Leicestershire). And last but not least Eugene Laverty for the World Supersport Championship, that’ll be four world titles in the bag, no pressure lads.
