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WROTE the following in an edition of Speedway Star in June 1981. Could have repeated it every year since including the present one. SPEEDWAY in this country is facing a crisis which threatens the foundations on which the sport is built. Unless something is done to stop the squabbling, the wastage of money, bending of the rules and, in some cases, blatant breaking of regulations, speedway will lose even the support of the hard core of fans. Vast numbers of followers are becoming disenchanted either with the way speedway is run or by the attitude of riders who seem prepared to bite the hand that feeds them. Any rider who doesn't fulfil his commitments is cheating the public. It is as simple as that. Speedway has got itself into such a mess with foreign riders that there is no easy way out. But a remedy must be found. First, however, the promoters who run league speedway in this country must put their own house in order. Speedway desperately needs a clearly defined set of regulations which are strictly adhered to without exception. The rulebook as it is at present is bent, manipulated, rewritten, ignored or changed at will. That cannot continue. Sadly, it seems it has.

Quite, Philip. I dare say these wise words are still dismissed as 'troublemaking' by those in power. Promoters are capable, in most cases, of running a speedway track, often against all the odds and many pour in time and money to keep tracks going, but all that good work seems to drift away on the wind once they act together as the BSPA. It would almost be a kindness to put control in independent hands. Sadly the sport, even after 90 years is still not mature enough to do this, or more crucially accept the decisions taken by an independent controller or body. Short-sighted pragmatism rules and certain riders exploit it to the full. Your comments about rider commitments are at the heart of the current crisis. Riding in Britain for too many is just something to do while waiting to make big money in Poland. Of course you don't do anything to risk that, such as putting full effort into racing. People rightly praise the quality of commitment of riders in the GPs and Poland. Sadly it's unrealistic to expect similar commitment in races, or even turning up here, when the pickings are so poor. Compromise after compromise erodes integrity. Adding in a disregard for the paying customer by promoters and riders creates the current toxic situation. The problem is, I should be angry, but all I can really feel is pity.

Dead right and that is what sticks in my craw more than anything else. We can all debate the rules that apply to speedway but, however controversial they might be, they can at least be applied consistently by an unbiased, impartial adjudicator. Simple truth is, though, all too often they are not. They are subject to inconsistent, arbitrary, incompetent and illegal rulings by interested parties - parties whose identities are hidden and whose reasons are rarely disclosed. That is almost totally contrary to our system of law and breeds frustration and anger amongst not just fans but officials of clubs as well. Isle of Wight asked for average reduction for Harland Cook last season, a rider who had been out of the sport for years,. They were refused, despite the precedent set for David Wallinger and Luke Clifton the previous season. Later in 2017 Paul Hurry was given an average reduction of almost 3 points, two clubs having been quoted an average in excess of 10.50 during the close season. Matt Marson, who has never ridden in Britain and has a British passport, was at one point graded at a 5.00 - which doesn't even exist in the NL rulebook. You can only believe that such rulings are motivated by spite, jealousy, backscratching and one-upmanship. People can complain about the rulebook and individual rules as much as they like but until its contents are applied consistently, fairly and openly by an independent arbitrator we might as well not have one.

I think if betting became widespread in speedway there's a risk the sport could become corrupt

Don't worry. The country is being turned into a throwback to the 1950's, so Speedway will fit in very well indeed. Keep calm, and stay analogue.

I don't care if Ludvig is a 7 point rider, a 10 point rider or a 2 point rider for the rest of his career, some of his races are entertaining to watch, and that's all I'm bothered about, entertainment, one of the most entertaining riders I've seen over the years (in my opinion) is Chris Schramm, and by the time I was watching him regularly, he was below 4 points, but he was still worth at least half of the entrance fee alone, but of course, everyone can have opinions In my opinion, Rene Bach, Ashley Morris, Stuart Robson and Ludvig Lindgren doesn't get much better for entertainment purposes, just need the interesting story of a young number 7 getting better every week (Alfie) A massive number 1 who can just blow riders away (Nichols??? Maybe they will change the rules as rumors have suggested) All of these riders would go into my dream team... But that's it, a dream lol

Scrap that! Bates has just announced he will be racing next season on his Twitter. Great news

Dog racing is as corrupt and bent as they come.

I went there first as a three month old baby ( my mum couldn't get a baby sitter and she was a truly avid fan of the Stars ) I remember as a toddler being sat on the crush barriers by my Dad and watching from what was a great viewpoint, just going into the third bend but nicely elevated. After I was allowed to run about during the match, I fought with other kids for the throwaway googles, which we collected and swapped. Up near the fence and close to those magnificent men on their speedy beasts, breathing in the smells. And then something momentous happened Ove Fundin arrived and I was enslaved immediately and began to watch the racing and results in much more detail. Ove was my first great shale hero. And the best rider ever. I followed the Stars home and away as much as possible ( when I had the money - usually from fruit picking ). On the coaches going away was a terrific experience and eye opening - especially the singing of many raucous, near the knuckle songs songs! And the terrace banter with other fans. How I "hated" Barry Briggs! The Golden helmet match races were also highlights - tense and dramatic. All my formative years were spent at the Firs. Tremendous memories indeed.

I hope Craig receives offers that can enable him to get equipment he needs. Good luck Cookie.

He could REFUSE to do that!

Norwich was a wonderful place to visit in the 1950/1960 era. The track was a real racers' circuit with no surrounding greyhound track to lessen the impression of speed. There was an excellent fish and chip stall in the middle of the last bend, and a first class ballroom where a free-admission dance was held after every Saturday night meeting. By "dance" I mean proper ballroom dancing with a resident band - not a screaming disco! A very sad day for speedway when to the eternal shame of the directors, the stadium was sold to the property developers at the end of 1964.

DEPENDS what your definition of contradiction is in this case. Mind is obviously different to many here but, no matter, we all have own own opinions. As far as I am concerned rules should encourage progress, to make the sport, in this case speedway, as good and simple as possible, to encourage those involved to aspire to the highest levels. The opposite is currently the case which as far as I'm concerned is a contradiction. But it's hardly worth an argument about semantics and if my interpretation doesn't align with yours that's fine. Mine is that the current regulations do more harm than good, starting with the one eight point rider per team fiasco.

Definitely an option. I don’t like the idea that an overpriced programme is an important revenue stream for Speedway. I think it’s a tragedy that Speedway has completely neglected the power of the Internet and the potential revenue they could recieve online. It’s damn near criminal that there is no online shop on the website over the Christmas period. You cannot tell me that the £3 programme is a necessity when money is just thrown away over the Christmas period. An online shop would open up Speedway merch gifts to the non-fan shopping for the fan something that now is impossible.

Leicester carried on using the facility for him knowing he wasn't risking further injury and Torun had important matches ahead

give us it all in 1 swift bowel movement So beautifully put!

the rulebook will continue to be bent until there is an independent governance. And i dont mean turning it into a darts like circus. Answer me this - apart from airfences and other safety measures what has improved? Tracks - worse, bikes - worse, team consistency - worse, body colours (trivial i know) - worse, etc etc etc As a sideline there has been a few pics of Dewayne Keeter on fb lately. - fondly remembered as a tryer who, frankly, wasn't all that good but stayed in the Lions team all season. He'd be dropped after a month now in the insane rush to win at all costs.

That would mean he was under contract and that Poole would be on the hook for his wages whether he rides for them or not. That's how it works in post Bosman soccer.

According to the available sources, MAX RECH, Polish pilot serving in Royal Air Force during World War II was the first ever Pole to ride speedway on British tracks. Max (Maximilian) Rech was born in Poznań in 1920. In the early months of World War II, with a pilot's license, he entered France and then traveled to England, where he joined the Polish Air Force fighting under the command of the RAF (Royal Air Force ). He was flying a Wellington bomber. On 15 August 1943 his plane with crews flew from Ingham Airport in England with the mission of demolishing the area of Borkum Island, part of the North Frisian Islands archipelago. Four minutes before the landing, the engine of the aircraft took fire after the attack of a German hunter. Twenty minutes later, at 23:50, the Wellington HE768 from the Polish squadron 300 crashed into the North Sea. Two crew members, Maximilian Rech and Czeslaw Poddany, survived the disaster and were drifting in the North Sea for eighteen days in a salvage boat . They were eventually "rescued", and actually taken captive by the German Kriegsmarine. Max Rech was sent to the IVB prisoners camp at Mükhlberg on the Laba river and later to another camp Luft VI Heydekrug in Lithuania, and later to Luft IV Gross Tychow in West Pomerania. The first mention of a competitor bearing the name Max Rech, then 26 years old, and referred to as "the former Polish airman serving during the Second World War in the Royal Air Force (RAF), dates back to 1950. He had a short spell with Fleetwood Flyers on the Lancashire coast. In that same year, Max Rech was one of the riders of the Exeter club in Cornwall . He never participated however in any of the team official meetings The next mention is that Max Rech moved to St Austell's "Cornish Gulls" club in the National League Division 3 and debuted in its colours on August 22, 1950, earning 5 +1 points in two races. He stayed with them through 1951 and into 1952 (when the name of Division 3 was changed to the Southern League). On 15 July 1952, Rech crashed at St.Austell, sustaining 3 broken ribs, a broken right arm, and a fractured collar bone. There is no mention of him ever riding again. After retirement from speedway he settled in the area of Newton Abbot. For many years Max worked as a bus driver for the Western National Omnibus Company in Plymouth. He passed away in 2004 MAX RECH known racing records: 1950 St.Austell 9 matches, 20 points 1951 St.Austell 21 matches, 94 points 1952 St.Austell 16 matches, 74 points TOTAL 46 matches, 188 points According to plymouthdevils.proboards.com, after his retirement, he moved to the Plymouth area where he sadly passed away in 2004. He was well thought of by Speedway followers in the South West, particularly Cornwall. I am grateful to Mr Brian Collins who provided me with most of above information. If anyone reading these words know anything else about Max Rech I will be very grateful for any information

There are so many things wrong with your logic, but it is crystal clear to me now that you simply do not understand how social media works in the slightest. To say social media is an echo chamber is one of the most out of touch things I've ever heard. It doesn't matter if you posted the video to a page with 1000 times the followers of SpeedwayGB. It wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference if the initial audience is not relevant. However, I am an expert in this industry and I'd be happy to correct you on any point you'd like to try and make. First of all, Twitter and Facebook aren't comparable. Twitter is not the marketing powerhouse that Facebook is. Twitter is dominated by celebrities and athletes. That's not to say that Twitter isn't an effective marketing platform or that businesses will not maintain a presence there, it is simply to say that it is not the ideal platform for this kind of promotion. And yes, we know speedway riders are athletes, and it's perfect for their personal profiles, but not for promoting a sport in general. Not to mention Twitter doesn't offer half the features that Facebook does in terms of insights, data collection and targeting. Right, to address your post, what percentage of those 537,000 people do you think are speedway fans? Would you say it is even as much as 5%? I mean honestly I doubt it's even that high, but for arguments sake let's assume it is. It is essential that you master the algorithm or you will have zero success. Say I have a page with 1,000,000 sports followers and 5% of them are speedway fans. I then go and post an exciting video about speedway. Facebook will then display that post to a small percentage of our followers to "test the water". The level of interaction that post receives will determine how many more followers that post is then shown to. Now say Facebook show this post to 1% of your followers, which in this scenario is 10,000 people. The number of speedway fans who see it is (assuming it's as high as 5%) is 500 people. Generally you can bank on approximately 25% of your reach interacting with your post. So in this scenario you can expect approximately 125 reactions, be it likes, shares, comments, etc. In the eyes of Facebook this post has been displayed to 10,000 people, but only 1.25% have interacted with it. Therefore the algorithm decides that this post is not worthy of competing with the hundreds of other posts vying for a position on your timeline and effectively instantly fizzles out. Now imagine if instead that post was shared to a page like SpeedwayGB, and in this scenario SpeedwayGB had 50,000 followers. Now say Facebook show this post to 1% of your followers, which in this scenario is 500 people. The number of speedway fans who see it is now 100%. Generally you can bank on approximately 25% of your followers reached interacting with your post, so now this post that was seen by 500 people has been interacted with 125 times. In the eyes of Facebook this post has been displayed to 500 people and 25% of those have interacted with it. The algorithm therefore decides that this post is hot, relevant or interesting. It is therefore worthy of a position on your timeline and Facebook will then increase the number of your followers who will also see that post. Now say that in total Facebook shows your post to 25% of all your followers, and 25% of those go on to interact with it. That's 3125 different people. The average Facebook user has 388 friends. I don't have that many, but it is the average. Let's say that Facebook then goes on to show just 15% of your friends that you have interacted with that post. That's 158,000+ people who have never seen speedway before, getting the chance to watch this video, and in turn, the chance to like the page themselves. Not only have you grown the page following ready for your next big post, but you've also reached over 150,000 people who before now had never even heard of speedway. If you make that video exciting enough, who knows how many of them will like the page? How many of them will watch more online? How many of them will see their local match advertised on the page and pop down with some friends to watch? The algorithm is simple. You need a large number of interactions on a post to boost the amount of people who see it. A page that is comprised only of speedway fans can generate a large number of interactions as the post is relevant to the audience, whereas a page with only a small number of speedway fans cannot generate a large number of interactions and therefore the snowball effect does not take hold. Additionally, how is sharing a clip of Tai speaking Scouse going to attract anybody to the sport? Nobody knows who Tai is. I'm a speedway fan and even I wouldn't be interested in watching something so boring. You need quality content that people will want to watch, and it absolutely cannot require any prior knowledge to be enjoyed. This is a screenshot of last months reach on one of the social media pages I represent: This particular page has under 100,000 followers, and yet over the course of the month we reached well over 2 million people and generated over £1,000,000 revenue in that period alone. Not only that, but as you can see from the graph above it was entirely organic. We didn't spend a penny to achieve that. Social media is anything but an echo chamber. In fact it is the single most valuable tool any business has access to during this era. The companies that embrace social media, learn it's ways and understand how to extract the best from it will succeed. The companies with ignorant and closed minded mentalities like yours will flounder and unfortunately it appears speedway is settling in down that route. Next?

This is not a matter of 'opinion'. What is it with speedway fans who think they can spout things that are factually wrong and hide behind 'opinion'. Nothing bad about being wrong, you simply hold your hand up, learn and move on. What really makes folk look foolish is when they are shown to be wrong and continue to trot out the 'opinion' line.. generally then followed by abuse. In this case, you've completely changed your argument. It is your opinion that the current regulations do more harm than good. That is fair enough, it is an opinion. Whether that opinion has any weight behind it would be determined by WHY you think they do more harm than good.. but an opinion nonetheless. However, your initial statement was something very different when you stated that many rules contradicted each other. It is nothing to do with an argument about semantics, you were asked to name ONE rule (bearing in mind you said there were many) and have failed to do so. Now, even more bizarrely you seem to be claiming you are speaking a different language to the rest of us and have your own definition of what contradiction means?

A huge part of social media is things get shared/retweeted and people see it even if theyre not following them, people seem to be forgetting that. I always shared Coventry Bees information in the past and it got others popping along or at least asking me about it. I alone retweeting goes to 1000 people that follow me and a huge % of that is local.

This implication of specific race nights was required years back, when most top the riders riding here, they were all chanting the advantages that would have been gained. but as like everything else it fell on deaf ears..... Now when most of these top riders have turned their backs on us the BSPA have the wisdom to now include it. But this wasn't done to encourage some of those top riders back , it was arranged for the total benefit of the remaining riders getting 2 pay-packets... I now question the need of fixed race nights, I'm sure, had we had one league, where 6man teams competed against each other , on a night that suited each team best , we would have far firmer footing than we have at present. As much as the thought of Niels returning to Lynn thrills me , our sport at present cant afford these mega stars. The sooner everybody realise it, we will be able to change the structure to substantiate our existence. Until then the sport will continually being govern by certain clubs and their own agendas..... and look where that has got us.....

so , the fat lad comes tonight . stay safe and enjoy the time over Christmas. wishing ALL my friends great time , dont do any stupid stuff and look forward to your team doing well in 2018 . ( one of my favourite sites ) inc glasgow. sheffield , redcar, edinbra and of course wucky. merry xmas EVERYONE !

Nothing anti from me on this one Cant blame Ged at all for a 'stick it' stance Will save my 'snidey banter' for something else