SITTINGBOURNE AC Associates Crusaders Speedway club have been dealt a blow with the news that David Meldrum has signed for Premier League side Stoke Potters.

Following on so soon after the team's fantastic win at Newport, the loss of a rider so influential in making that victory possible is a huge disappointment for the Crusaders management.

Rules stipulate that any rider with a last Premier League average of more than five and a half points a meeting is unable to ride in both the top flight and the Conference.

Meldrum's last qualifying average for home-own club Berwick was arouns seven so his move to Stoke means an abrupt end to his career at the Old Gun Site.

General manager Steve Ribbons said: "With this scenario being virtually identical to what happened earlier in the season involving previous number ones David McAllan and then Lee Dicken, this whole business has left us asking, 'why does it always happen to us?'

"It is especially galling that it is Stoke who’ve signed Meldrum as they actually have their own Conference League side, the Spitfires.

"What is the point in them having a nursery side, if when the senior Premier League team is suddenly in need of a rider, they come and take away an important asset from another club?"

Ribbons was particularly upset at the handling of the transfer.

He added: "When Stoke decided they wanted him, they spoke only to his parent club Berwick. At this point, Meldrum was riding for only one club, not Berwick (who haven’t called on him since early 2004) but Sittingbourne.

"Yet neither Berwick nor Stoke even had the decency to let us know what was happening. And, in fact, Meldrum also didn’t give us the courtesy of a call to let us know he was moving on.

"We really do feel that some serious consideration needs to be given to the absence of rules to defend Conference sides against this sort of thing."

“We’re running a business just as much as any other club and commercially we suffer when a rider heralded as our new number one and already proving very popular, is just taken from us.

"If the 28 day contracts that Conference riders sign are to mean anything at all, it’s surely got to mean clubs in this division being able to tell Premier clubs that if they want one of our riders they must talk wait the necessary period."