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So is Bjarne a realistic option? Would be good to have him at Poole again before he retires. Should be okay at CL level..?

Bjarne Pedersen set to retire is news most Pirate fans would view as the end of an era and most would see as sad to hear. He gave amazing service to Poole and always gave his best, his 21 points at Lakeside would forever live in my memory and I really hope he gets a farewell meeting because he fully deserves one.

How about having a heavy top 5 & having both Thompson Twins at reserve??

But that's the issue Vince, the 'normal league meetings', dont deliver those less regular fans who know about the sport, therefore dont deliver big crowds, hence no atmosphere, hence no increase in crowds. A perfect vicious circle.. The 'play off qualifiers' don't seem to engage people regularly enough, and the play off themselves almost become then a 'loss reducer' for the season as 'lapsed fans' come back. . However I bet at most tracks the increased attendance doesn't cover the overall short fall in attendance through the season to watch 'the qualifiers', by some distance... You might as well give away free tickets to as many people of a certain demographic as you can... I would suggest anyone 15 to 25 should just be targeted and offered free tickets as that is the glaring demographic missing from most Speedway meetings.. 15 year olds now hunt in packs so 10 or so would attend together, and even though there has been free admission for 'kids' for a long time at some tracks, not many get to 16+, leave school, and pay to attend, therefore the system doesn't garner any return.. And hardly anyone under 25 is seen at Speedway these days. And plenty of them will have jobs and disposable income due to more of them now still living with parents, before the (inevitable for many), 'family and mortgage' kicks in around 27-30 years old, and that disposable income becomes an oh, so distant memory.. Target these demographics and, if between 19 to 25, offer one free ticket and maybe three more meetings at say a tenner to try and get them hooked? Anyone 15 to 18, just throw free tickets at them.. They are not there now so no loss, and the more that attend (paying or not), the more atmosphere naturally gets created. Which may encourage more to attend more regularly in future. And a virtuous circle begins.. And if nothing else, should you reach the play offs there would be a good few hundred more in the local area who, (by definition of attending for free during the season), now know about the team and sport and might therefore, go along to watch on those nights and pay full price?

MASSIVE CONGRATS to Danny Ayres, 2019 Scorpion of the year, HAS to be back in 2020

I myself am in favour of radical changes which i won't repeat here because i can't take the flak atm. It does look, however that another season of 'lets pretend nothing's wrong' is ahead of us with 2/3 teams being bribed to enter the top league stripping the less disastrous (i won't say successful) CL and NL of clubs. One thing i would say again is that people talk about dilution when big names don't ride here but actually the product is well presented good racing, not necessarily star names whose names ,lets be honest, mean f. all to the general public.

Ah yes, being in the team was one of the three options in the article!

For me it's a no brainer to keep kasper on his low average and out the two you said get Ayres back. Think Tom will be at brum

I hope Kent gets accepted in the championship, nothing guaranteed yet I think

Wroclaw hoping to sign Dan Bewley

I agree that a big crowd will make the whole thing seem better but how many return to watch normal league meetings in the future? Those extra people are surely lapsed and armchair fans in the main who normally keep an eye on the results in the local paper or watch the meetings on TV. Doesn't seem to engage new fans in any numbers or keep people paying to come in the door. It's been the case for years that a club doing well in the league increases it's crowds significantly, also been the case that often enough the increase doesn't pay for a competitive team. Promoters are much maligned for a lack of ambition when they run cheaper teams but in truth they are often the clubs that survive year on year.

Have an independent control board run the sport. Then put in a cap on the total amount of wages a club can pay it riders. So for argument sake a clubs had a wage cap of 10000 per meeting that would be upto the clubs how that was shared out among the 7 riders. If you wanted to go bulls out and sign 2 big expensive riders then fine but that would limit who you could sign further down. To make it work the riders are paid centrally from the independent body that runs the sport each club pays the 10000 to the central body after each home match. The end to average manipulation

I don't do twitter either but a couple of his tweets have been shared to other forums - or should that be fora?

The clubs who run in the uk at weekends hardly do any better do they ? if the product is better on a weekday rather than a weekend Dave will go on the week day . More things to do at a weekend now in the uk than go to speedway a fact lost on some .

I wasn’t proposing pay to ride. And I assumed PL clubs would cover some expenses of the NL riders, pay an appearance fee, arrange sponsorship and help them with machinery and advice. It’s clear that some 15 year old NL riders are very promising and one would have thought that PL clubs would be delighted to take Palin and the Thompson twins under their wing, just as they would have snapped up Woffinden, Ward and Lambert.

I do hope we are not drifting into the cheap "snowflake generation" argument here are we? I'll give my own experience as an example... I was first taken to the sport aged 7 to Belle Vue's Hyde Road and was hooked..we then went every Saturday. Not a school night, no problem. Though I suspect it might have been a problem had it been a midweek track at that young age....less so 2-4 years later. Then, we certainly had the odd midweek trip to follow the Aces to Sheffield and Birmingham. I am now a father of six year old twins, they will be 7 by the time of the next speedway season, so the right age (I think) to have a grasp of what's going on and potentially engage with it. Bedtime at ours is 7-7:30, later at the weekend. So a midweek track is out for now. Additionally, even when they are a little older and could cope with a later midweek night, we - unlike my parent's boomer generation - are much more squeezed for time...and disposable income beyond the mortgage and bills. Like many in the 30s-40s generation, both us parents work and after the kids get back from after school club and we rush to make dinner, there's little time left for anything before bed. In contrast, as a child, I had the luxury of a stay-at-home mum who could get us kids home at a decent time, have dinner ready early for the whole family and much more time for any possible midweek outing. Society has changed. Now, this isn't all about me, speedway can draw from older and younger groups. But I do think that appealing to my (current) demographic is absolutely key for speedway now and in the future. We only really have time- and money - for weekend outings and if speedway can't cater for us, it is going to miss out on thousands of families like mine.

The voting was carried out during one meeting, I was certainly shocked that Rory won rider of the season but wouldn’t have given it to Bomber myself. We can only answer for ourselves as to who we think should’ve won, we all have our own opinion

Please don't have such musings in public. The more ridiculous the idea ... The more likely that Armando will implement it.

exactly I have on ignore then a lunatic quotes him

Pre season 2017, 2018 & 2019 Put him on ignore as it is easy & you don't have to read his posts(unless someone quotes them. He is a

If that is the case and I think it will, I won't be returning in 2020.

Agree with this comment... To me he took Ully's standing leg and was hard done by... if it was the other way round I would been screaming for all 4 back... however it didn't happen but at the end of the day it's down to how the Ref saw it an Ruff agreed with the Ref on the Barker/Phillips decission which I and many others didn't agree with so ya pays ya money and takes ya chance... Ultimately and luckily it had no bearing on the final result as the best team won over the two legs... If either of those incidents did have an impact can you imagine the bloody uproar on here... and that's before Jenga started stirring the shot... It comes to something when the winning team are still moaning after the event... Regards THJ

well after seeing the replay of Charles riding over the whit line . i am still looking for it . watched it tons of times and still cannot see where he went over the line with his driven (rear) wheel .. would like to see the Ben Barker exclusion too . Danny has admitted he locked up and Ben reacted in the only way poss . can anyone post that on here , seeing that the Newcastle management were so quick to put Charles exclusion on here while the meeting ongoing . so lets see it and maybe i will change my mind ... do it for Dish ! deffo all 4 back ...

Watching the replay and at no point did Wright have both wheels over the white line

A new track curator for the club. http://www.sheffield-speedway.com/news.php?extend.2808&fbclid=IwAR27vZMHhh-BKtCAoFVbzUZFt7ux8z2T1s457R2Q6LOVHX38OmAtHlfJvJA