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The benefit of hindsight? Really? Do you really need hindsight to see that spending vast amounts more than you are bringing in, and racing on nights dictated to by your employees, rather than for the benefit of your customers, is anything other than a ludicrous business plan?.. Do you really need hindsight to see that trying to run a bona fide Sporting Championship, whilst sharing competitors with your rivals on an adhoc basis, is laughable and brings zero credibility to the very competition you are spending ridiculous sums trying to win? Do you really need hindsight to see that you have, annually, lost thousands of fans due to your operating model and business plan and replaced them with very, very few new fans? I would suggest anyone who didn't spot the current shambles being the obvious conclusion of their actions, must have very, very poor vision indeed, and not having hindsight is the least of their worries...

He has history when we first brought him over he was like a spoilt brat , we were slated by some on here for showing him the door , but wouldn't touch him with a berge pole.

Until the sport is one business there will never be a common business plan, each club has differing levels of investment/expense/needs so the model for say Belle Vue will not fit Stoke and vice versa. A former Promoter who was losing a 6 figure some each season told me he wouldn't miss it yet by the same token a club that lost £40k over 3 seasons at the same time couldn't continue and chose to race in the NL. Such a huge disparity in financial resource will never bring the agendas together and there is always somebody who will run off to their legal counsel and threaten the members with "this is a cartel of businesses making rules and agreements to threaten my trade" which if proven has unlimited fines in law. (Coventry and Peterborough anyone). The point I am making is that it is clear from all the comments on all the threads that all the members of this forum and all the members of the BSPA are in the same situation, they haven't a solution not withstanding the BSPA are beaten at every turn. I agree wholeheartedly with the nature of many of the criticisms and i don't agree with Rob's bull headed approach to most matters but his answers to the questions that were published clearly demonstrates an understanding of the mess even if he is trying to shut the door after the horse has bolted. What he has done in response to many of the critics is acknowledge the situation in stark contrast to the "everything in the garden is rosy" statements from the past that the BSPA has been vilified for by many or the same who are criticising now, but I respect your comments and response, thank you.

it's a tricky one ...my memories of years gone by at Swindon was that the track was very deep to start with . These days it's risk free and very slick from the start . There can be no doubt it's been a poor track for quite a while now and not only that quite dangerous with holes etc ..One of the reasons Nick Morris left was because of it . A school of thought might that the lack of money in speedway is also effecting how the tracks are being set up .

And as RG alluded to in the SS, 'guest riding' is a nice earner for the riders which helps fund their riding, hence they are here to stay.. Their team might only have 30 or so meetings but riders can ride many, many more times if they have the 'right average' .... (and maintain it)...

No this ones a genuine loon.

1. Swindon Doyle, Batchelor, Musielak 2. Wolverhampton Masters, Schlein, Thorssell 3. Peterborough Andersen, Cook, Tungate 4. Belle Vue Fricke, Bjerre, Bewley 5. Poole Holder, Kurtz, Grajczonek 6. Ipswich Harris, Lawson, King 7. Kings Lynn (Rumoured) Lambert, Proctor, Riss

I think you will find you are mistaken re Ged and Neil.

Harringay was a strange sort of stadium with stands of all shapes and sizes. I worked there a few times in the 1980's, by then it was in a pretty run down state. At one end of the stadium there were big flights of steps that once led to the long gone Arena that was demolished in the late 1950's.

There are no solutions .if you had read the six pages you would understand most people feel the same .

Sadly, I think you're right. Another example of how the sport is being run for the benefit of its paid employees rather than its paying customers.

I'd say its more down to preparation. If a track like Swindon has one line, that's the fault of the curator (although he maybe under orders). Size and shape is crucial (that's why the NSS is as good as it is) but its not the be all and end all. The way I see it, if Scunthorpe can be good for racing there's no reason why Swindon - and others - can't be.

Where is the common sense in a pairs/team event being decided by an individual run off?

What about riders having engines just for fridays time trials... One for use, one spare both built for that one minute fast one and then serviced for the next round??? They’d cost 5500€ each if I’d buy them.

I fear we will not hear from Ged or Neil again. It is almost unbelievable the total disregard for the paying public shown by the Mafia and the seeming contempt in which we are regarded.

Workington crowds have been droping for years ..each year has been nip and tuck if they ran on or not ...Running on a sat night has hardly been a saviour for them

The five-page interview with Rob Godfrey in this week's Speedway Star certainly provides food for thought. Firstly, we can only take what we see quoted at face value and perhaps he said more which couldn't be included for space reasons. Benefit of the doubt. While I don't profess to know his background or what he does or doesn't do for the sport today, I've never spoken to the man, there are a number of points raised that I'd like to respond to and are worthy of further critical analysis (sorry to waffle on and hope you stay awake till the end!: SEMI-PRO OR AMATEUR? Rob alludes to, if not quite advocates, the idea of British speedway becoming semi-pro in the future, which (as I suggested in another recent BSF thread) it needs to do NOW in the short-term if it is to survive with any credibility left. He effectively spells it out just why this is the case when referring to the recent demise of Championship treble winners Workington. And the nail is well and truly smashed on the head in a separate, much smaller, item in the same issue of the Star in which Workington promoter Laura Morgan reveals that running the second tier club has cost her around £750,000 in total and that another injection of £75,000 would be required simply to run this year, when Comets would surely expect to incur at least the same loss, if not more given how hard it would be to repeat their 2018 triple. Later in the piece, Rob cites his own Josh Auty as one rider who "seems to make it pay" competing only in one league. If Auty can, who don't many others? As long as promoters keep paying them collectively more than what turnstiles and sponsorship income, they will continue to spend (waste?) money on expensive machinery, engine tuning, mechanics and fancy transport. Only the promoters can stop this happening. FULL-TIME PROMOTERS The question of professional promoters is a double-edged sword. Rob says that of the modern day regime, "not one of us needs to do it". Therein lies one problem: rightly or wrongly, they are not running their clubs on a full-time, 24/7 basis and don't depend on the sport for a living - unlike the likes of Fearman, Ochiltree, Silver, Dunton, Wilson, Thomas, Mawdsley, etc in days gone by. It was their livelihood - yes, of course, there were less counter-attractions competing for fans' money and - but they still had to work hard for it. For many (if not all) of today's ilk, speedway is a hobby they can indulge (for a while at least) to feed their egos. Unfortunately, the sport in Britain has been denigrated so much over the years that there is no turning back. COUNTING THE COST Rob reveals that winning the league (Div 2) in 2012 cost Scunthorpe 30 grand, suggesting Sheffield probably paid a similar price in their pursuit of honours. Later, he gives Glasgow as a prime example of a club that has the slickest PR machine in the country . . . yet still cannot attract sufficient crowds to meet their running costs. This, in itself, tells you all you need to know about promoters over-paying riders. The sums just don't add up. Yes, of course, riders deserve to be paid handsomely for the risks they take. But no business will survive, long-term, if it continues to ignore the basic rules of life: don't pay out more than you can afford. COMPARING THE PAST As for Rob's line about speedway today being "far, far better than it ever was", provocatively reproduced on the Star's front cover, I reckon thousands of our customers at Retro Speedway would vehemently disagree! To be fair, Rob is duty bound to promote his club and modern speedway in general, and in doing tries to discredit the past and (to paraphrase Harold Macmillan) convince his punters that "you've never had it so good". So we must assume that he never had the privilege of enjoying the likes of great entertainers such as Peter Collins, Chris Morton, the Morans, Bruce Penhall, Michael Lee, Ole Olsen, Jan O. Pedersen, Simon Cross, Malcolm Simmons, Mark Loram (started in 1987) . . . the list really is endless and I've not even mentioned the innumerable BL2/National League favourites who thrilled the crowds week in, week out. If he was talking about the Grand Prix, compared to the old and long-winded World Championship qualifying system, I'd be inclined to agree. The GPs routinely serve up tremendous entertainment and invariably top quality racing, where riders of equal ability are well matched. But comparing the GPs with the Elite League matches I've seen on telly is more often than not chalk and cheese. Riders strung out by half-a-lap isn't entertainment, nor any sort of advert for domestic speedway. From what we read, the point Rob doesn't seem to grasp here is that the days of a reserve or middle order man popping out of the gate and holding a world class rider at bay for all four laps are long gone and now rarer than a truthful MP. Speed, and the riders' unquenchable thirst for it, has helped kill the sport as a spectacle, although here the promoters of the mid-70s must shoulder a lot of blame for failing to nip the four-valve revolution in the bud before it sent costs spiralling out of control and that's where we are today. PROMOTING - HIGHLIGHTS PACKAGE I was encouraged to read of the BSPA's plans for a revamped website with hopes to include free-to-air matches. In the same issue I read that Poland will be airing a magazine-style show every Monday. So it begs the question: why haven't the BSPA done a deal with Go-Speed and all the individual DVD filming companies covering the tracks to put together, say, a weekly 30-minute show showcasing the past week's highlights, complemented by interviews with promoters and riders on current topics and burning issues? Would not a sufficient number of fans not be prepared to pay a nominal 50p or £1 per week throughout the season to cover production costs? The show could be offered as a download from the BSPA site with the same show being uploaded to YouTube a week later (if it hit YT at the same time, there would obviously be no point in paying the small sub). For obvious reasons, these edited highlights would not include any from 'live' BT Sport matches. British speedway desperately needs to harness its relationship with BT Sport if it is to have any hope of attracting a national sponsor, or backers for each of the three divisions (alas, Rob did not mention this failure on the BSPA's part). The BSPA already has the ideal experienced and knowledgeable anchor man/presenter on its pay roll in Nigel Pearson, while two or three of the best people producing DVDs could be tasked to edit the best action clips and interviews. Reality is, though, a weekly highlights download via the BSPA site or uploaded to YouTube probably won't attract one new supporters, especially a youngster who can't take his or her eyes off their smart phone for more than a few seconds. This will sound crazy to some, but promoters' priority should be to do all they can to KEEP their existing supporter base and TRY to win back those who have been disenfranchised over the part 10 years. Forget chasing new, young fans . . . speedway just doesn't cut it with them and very probably never will again. So forget them for now and focus all energies on keeping what you have and winning back the old faithful with fresh ideas, well prepared tracks and a professionally run sport. Only last week we at Retro Speedway were delighted to take on five new subscribers to our bi-monthly Backtrack magazine. OK, five in a matter of days is really nothing. But not in the context of where British speedway is now it isn't. They are five people who enjoyed reliving past memories but are now engaging with the sport again. Facebook is the biggest factor in this: whether you personally log on to FB or not and regardless of your personal preferences (FB, forum or Twitter), more and more of the older generation are signing up to Facebook's social media platform to 'chat' to kindred spirits - and that is where the BSPA should be looking to re-recruit former fans who might be tempted back into stadiums. This is where they will find their target audience. SOCIAL MEDIA Rob again uses Glasgow as his best example of a club that does social media very well. But he is wrong to excuse others clubs for not emulating them, or even going close to doing so, by using costs as an excuse. Having a good mate who runs a successful non-league football club, I can confirm that a good promo video was produced for them for as little as £750 . . . or, to put it another way, the equivalent of what some riders in UK speedway earn in one night. Running good Twitter and Facebook platforms is very inexpensive - all that's needed are the right people to manage and execute it to an acceptably professional standard and who have the imagination to offer what supporters should expect from these services. DOUBLING-UP, GUESTS AND RACE FORMAT While Rob was of course asked about how the rampant use of guests and doubling-up does untold harm to the sport's image, he dismisses very lightly the suggestion that the problems would be eased by cutting team numbers from seven to six and adopting a new heat formula (six-man teams have been used in the past). Am I missing something here? British speedway doesn't have enough riders of a certain minimum standard to staff its three leagues, and yet the hierarchy blindly sticks with seven-man teams even though virtually every club in the land is inevitably soon forced into calling up guests and doubling-up riders. Rob admits: "We don't have a big enough crop of riders without doubling-up, which is what causes all the problems". We know what the problems are, Rob. What we desperately need from people like you who govern and run the sport are solutions and ideas. Six-man teams (even in the short-term, until the young Brits coming up are up to scratch in a few years' time) won't eradicate the needs for guests, R/R and doubling-up but surely it's a no-brainer as at least a starting point . . . or please tell me why it isn't? What disillusions me more than anything when I read comments from promoters in the wake of another BSPA AGM is the chronic lack of ideas and innovation. I mean, why aren't one or two competitions run on slightly different formats and rules? Where's the variety - if not in terms of team numbers, then at least in competition formats? Even the rightly much-maligned England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had the gumption to realise that fans needed more than a staple diet of four-day Championship games and the sport has generally reaped the benefit of introducing two DIFFERENT limited-overs formats, the 50-over one-day league and T20 knockout comp, which are replicated in all major cricketing countries. I'd like to see a promoter come up with something a bit radical and off the wall. Put on a 16 or 20-heat meeting that embraces different sections: team racing and individual events; perhaps throw in a couple of match-races (Golden Helmet & Silver Helmet - remember them?); a few handicap races where the top riders start off the back grid; a 4-heat 250cc juniors event; maybe even a ladies' race (look how much national publicity is afforded to women's football and cricket at domestic and international level ). Indeed, why not run the KO Cup along these lines for a season on an experimental basis? Supporters might actually look forward to attending, because it's DIFFERENT. But with British speedway, it's the tired, predictable same old, same old. Lots of ongoing, familiar problems, very few solutions.

The best racing I've seen on a week-to-week basis is at modern day Scunthorpe, so I understand Rob Godfrey's statement. If I'd have been privileged to watch racing on a weekly basis at Hyde Road in the 70s, maybe I'd disagree. To be honest, I don't think the racing is any better or any worse. The big difference is the atmosphere during meetings - that's not the same. And that's down to crowds being a fraction of what they were.

The considered opinion is that Rev Limiters only have any effect at the start. Back in my days as a 17 year old owner of a Triumph Tiger Cub, we had a rev limiter! Only it was just called a throttle in those days!

I for one am looking forward to the new season

Agree Czech golden helmet is a big accolade scotty finished in the top 10 in the world on 4 occasions and has a record number of British titlesI really don’t see that as underachieving

But IF it were to be - King's Lynn: Lambert, Iversen, Riss. ( Also rumoured ) Just about as good as anyone else.

I think the biggest positive is its another season of speedway at Foxhall for those that want to go and watch it.

Other than for Doyle, Fricke or Robert Lambert I can't see any bids coming forward if such a thing existed. Chequebook speedway long ago departed from speedway other than perhaps the maximum allowed by contactless cards (£29.99 )

Agree totally but it’s easy to invite calls when all teams are full and another 7 riders still looking for a team after the demise of Workington. I will be happy if we have 7 men standing at the end of April early season is usually carnage. Personally think most teams have a fairly long tail this year due to the points limit.