Dear Ipswich fans,

I wanted to reach out to you all directly following the announcement of our strategic partnership with Polish club WTS Sparta Wrocław at Foxhall on Wednesday evening – an agreement that I think could be a great moment in the history of these two storied clubs.

WTS Sparta Wrocław and the club’s owners, the Rusko family, have purchased a minority stake and we will support each other in a wide range of areas, including but not limited to youth development and training, promotion and marketing, sponsorship, event operations, ticketing, fan experience and building sustainable clubs at the heart of their communities that attract fans from a wide range of ages.

I need to stress that nothing has changed in the sense that Mayfield still controls the club. Along with general manager Andrew Chisholm and team manager Paul Hurry, I am still very much in charge and making the decisions.

That said, we could not have found better partners than WTS Sparta Wrocław and the Rusko family. There’s no doubt that they run one of the biggest and most successful clubs in world speedway – one which sells out every single home match and has a very wide demographic of fans, with young and old getting behind the club on race days at the Olympic Stadium.

I am particularly heartened by the fact that club president Andrzej Rusko talks about his affection for the Witches, and how the great John Louis taught him so much about British speedway when we had the biggest league in the world – lessons he was able to apply in Poland. It’s fair to say the Polish league is currently the stronger of the two, but the Rusko family knows that a healthy sport needs to thrive globally, and not just in Poland.

Nothing is going to change overnight following this agreement, but we will be working with the Wrocław club in a number of key areas. We will also have a sporting working group with our general manager and team manager and their opposite numbers in Poland.

Together, we can have much more influence over the best engine tuners, the best riders and the best academies. There are lots of areas where we will be stronger together than we would be on our own. I am quite excited and enthused about the benefits that this strategic partnership can bring – not least the ability to reach out to the many Polish fans that live in the UK and encourage them to follow the Witches.

It’s fair to say we are already working on our team for 2027, and we are excited to see the kind of side we can build with the luxury of months to recruit riders, rather than facing the last-minute scramble we did for 2026 as most of the teams were already assembled by the time we came to the table.

We have owned the Witches for around 12 weeks now and that time has absolutely flown by. We have already made improvements in a number of key areas, including the introduction of a new streaming service and the big screen at Foxhall. We have given the stadium a lick of paint, and the club has a fresh logo, new signage and a new air fence for 2026. We have also improved the lighting in the pits for our riders and supported them through their concerns over insurance in British speedway earlier in the season.

We have a Premiership Knockout Cup Final showdown with Leicester to look forward to in a month’s time, and if we could end our first season with a trophy, that would be some achievement, given how late our plans for the season – on and off the track – came together.

Following Thursday’s victory over Belle Vue, we have won all six of our home fixtures at Foxhall this season so far, and we hope that will stand us in good stead to make the Rowe Motor Oil Premiership play-offs and give our fans something to celebrate in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks very much for your continued support of the club. It means a huge amount to all of us involved, and it’s a really special feeling to introduce our new partnership with WTS Sparta Wrocław to you. I genuinely believe this is the start of a special relationship that will benefit both clubs as we lead the Witches into an exciting new era.

Best Wishes,

Richard Coleman