The speedway authorities must act over the farcical events at Arlington Stadium on Saturday night.

Eastbourne Eagles went into the record books with a 75-0 win over King's Lynn after the visiting team had walked out ten minutes before the start.

Hundreds of fans listened in stunned silence as promoter Jon Cook told them: "King's Lynn have decided they are not going to ride. They are loading up their bikes as I speak and going home."

Then, in amazing scenes, the Eastbourne riders rode round the track on their own, completing four laps in all the 15 heats, to claim victory.

Cook labelled King's Lynn's action "a disgrace" and said: "We will be deman-ding compensation.

"Tonight has cost us around £10,000 and could have a disastrous affect on our future business."

King's Lynn team manager Nigel Wagstaff refused to comment except to say: "We have stuck together as a team over this. We agree we have done the right thing."

The powers that be will surely take a different view.

Whatever case King's Lynn might have thought they had, their action in walking out on hundreds of speedway supporters is indefensible.

Quite simply, they lost the plot. Speedway teams are in the entertainment business.

In that context, the arguments were irrelevant. The show should have gone on.

In the short term, drastic measures have to be taken to guarantee that nothing like this ever happens again.

Ultimately, it may be the sport will decide it is better off without anyone who treats the public with such contempt.

The row developed in the run-up to the meeting when King's Lynn revealed they planned to use Isle of Wight rider Danny Bird as a guest replacement. Eastbourne referred the matter to referee Jim Lawrence and the league management committee, who ruled that Bird was ineligible because his average was one-hundredth of a point too high.

King's Lynn could have brought in another rider, or gone into three races with only one rider, and ridden under protest.

Ironically, with or without Bird, they would probably have won the match against an Eastbourne team at a low ebb following the serious injury to star rider Joe Screen at King's Lynn last Wednesday.

In the event, they decided to do neither. The result was the fans were let down badly and the sport brought into disrepute.

Said referee Lawrence: "I tried to persuade them that in the interests of speedway and all concerned they should take part in the meeting and explained the repercussions to them, but they decided to go."

The sight of Eastbourne "hard man," co-promoter and stadium owner Bob Dugard, close to tears spoke volumes for what happened.

"I am stunned. I could never do a thing like that. I can't believe they have just walked out."

Dugard believes King's Lynn could close in the aftermath of Saturday's events.

"This could bring the place down unless the BSPA put an administrator in there to complete the season."

Eastbourne gave refunds to fans who had travelled from King's Lynn for the match, while other supporters will be admitted free to another meeting.

As for the action, Eastbourne did their best as they went through the motions, recording 5-0 wins in every heat, with the extraordinary sight of David Norris punch-ing the air every time he crossed the line.

For the record, Martin Dugard was credited with 15 points, Jason Lyons 12, Brent Werner 11, Joonas Kylmakorpi and Marcus Andersson ten, Norris nine and Dean Barker eight.