Palovaara the latest to join the Diamonds

SWEDISH star Victor Palovaara has become the fifth member of an exciting new Newcastle Diamonds’ team for their 90th anniversary season next year.

It will be the Swede’s second spell at Newcastle and comes not long after his first, which was as a loan signing in April 2016 after Tero Aarnio suffered a serious knee injury.

Palovaara quickly adapted to the tricky Brough Park track and amassed 219 points in 32 league and cup matches for an average of 6.44.

That included a brilliant 15-point paid maximum against Sheffield which helped the Diamonds to the Knockout Cup final and a third-place finish in the table.

He returned to race in Britain this year, too, joining Edinburgh after the Monarchs made a change to their line-up at the end of June.

Again, Palovaara did everything the Scots’ management hoped, completing 18 official fixtures and notching 116 points for an average of 6.25.

Delighted to have another thrill-maker for the very muchchanged Newcastle set-up for 2019, co-promoter Martin Phillips said, “Victor has a lot of previous experience of our Byker track and will slot into the new side beautifully.

“As most of our fans will remember, he is a stylish, faststarting racer and, coming to us on a relatively low average, we have a real bargain.

“He turned other clubs down once he knew we were interested and was so keen to return to us, so sorting out a deal with him was a pleasure.”

This latest signing means the Diamonds have five racers all from different countries as the Swede joins Matthew Wethers (Australia), Nike Lunna (Finland), Thomas Jorgensen (Denmark) and Max Clegg (England) in a cosmopolitan side.

With 38 points as the limit governing team strengths, the Diamonds have two places left to fill and less than ten points remaining to cover both.

It is therefore clear Ludvig Lindgren (6.47) and Matej Kus (5.63) of this year’s team cannot both be fitted in.

News of the final two pieces of the jigsaw could be revealed by the weekend.