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Speedway a new way PLANS are going ahead for a summer of speedway racing on the Isle of Wight as Co-owners Barry Bishop and Martin Widman have revealed that they will put on a series of sizzling summer spectaculars at the Smallbrook Stadium in Ryde. The Wightlink Warriors and Wizards withdrew from the National League and Midland and Southern Development League respectively, last month after being faced with what they believe was an impossible situation when the board of the British Speedway Promoters Limited imposed rules without consultation and slashed the overall team strengths to what the island’s promoters considered an unviable level. But fears that it meant an end to the sport on the island have been removed with today’s official announcement that there will be a full programme of two wheeled speedway action this summer. Bishop and Widman resurrected the sport on the island in 2016 and turned the Warriors into the most talked about club in the country, winning the prestigious World Speedway Riders’ Association Community Club of the Year for an unprecedented two years in a row in 2018 and 2019. Giving just enough to get fans excited, co-owner Barry Bishop said: “As you can imagine it has been a very busy time for Martin and I to get ourselves into a position where we can update everyone in the direction we are taking the club. “We have received tremendous support from all over the world on this and we cannot wait to implement the faith shown in us by so many. We have to thank everyone who has supported us to move this forward following our withdrawal from league racing, and it is this support and belief in the vision that will drive the project forward. “With the help of so many, I am delighted to confirm that there will be speedway in 2021 at Smallbrook Stadium and we know you will be thrilled with what’s coming.” “We are working hard to have a full calendar of events and in addition to those, we have already staged preliminary talks with two international bodies, one of which is the French League, and while there are many challenges to overcome, our initial conversations have been very positive and well received. “With a spectacular season ahead full of innovation, fun, technology and pride, we cannot wait to get started and welcome our fans, sponsors and supporters back to the club.” The news will delight the island’s fans and those from the mainland who visit Smallbrook Stadium regularly during the summer months and for those further away who plan their holidays to coincide with meetings. Added Bishop: “As soon as we are in a position to announce full details of what we are planning we will do so and Martin and I are both convinced that we will be putting on speedway in a new and different way which will give those who come to a meeting at Smallbrook one of the best night’s entertainment they have ever had. Our policy has always been to put the supporters first and that has been at the very forefront of our minds ever since we had to take the decision not to compete in the National League this year.”

It's easy to do both. Barry crams the whole lot into a show that runs just over two hours on the Island. This includes plenty of interaction with the kids. At some tracks, half the night is spent watching the tractor go around. The whole package does need revamping. Nowadays, it's not enough to just open the gates and hope for the best.

Think when Cookie was at Edinburgh he basically went round smashing track records one season.

Both sedgeman and Morris have ridden for Ipswich. I’d choose ash every time. Sedgeman was a absolute disgrace with a terrible attitude.

Maybe they prefer the track at Boro...

Sorry these spaces have now been renamed O.A.P parking & 5 of the 7 Panthers has spots reserved every week.

Sadly the difference in standard has occurred in two ways. One is that the gulf between heat leaders and the rest is getting very wide and it will take special riders like Gilkes to bridge that gap but for the most part there will be a stark difference in ability on track at the same time. Two is that building a decent team to the limit can be done if known about but only by a couple of teams. Kent had a much better team before the rule change than after it and the points difference is only 0.26. Easbourne have been able to pick up the pieces of the IOW and Plymouth sides along with a local number 1 and build a side thats easier to pay to watch but it will still be a hard sell if the opposition isn't putting up much of a fight. Oh and no major disrespect to the lads but this top 5 isn't a patch on the class of 2016.

I think its very telling by the lack of Premiership teams who run a "junior team", and how many Championship teams have launched one, that one of the reasons for what has taken place is down to trying to clearly get a demarcation in standards between the Championship and the NDL.. It isnt a hard sell for Belle Vue to sell Premiership and NDL Speedway as the standards are so different, which is then reflected in the price... However, I would imagine it would have been a tough ask to sell the Championship to fans of joint Championship/NDL teams when you would have paid around £17/£18 to watch seven or eight or so riders that a week later you could have paid out a tenner to see all of them ride at the same venue.. You would have been struggling to justify an 80% price point differential I would think..

The problem is it ALWAYS has been a training league that delivered riders at a greater rate to the higher leagues than any other route. But what this has now become is a misguided, not thought through, imposition in order to "reduce" costs of reserve rider wages for higher leagues. That's the fact of it - remember we attended the 2020 AGM. Costs Costs Costs... Riders not wanting to go up because they were sitting pretty in a league that still delivered riders to the higher leagues year on year on year, yet managed to provide a product and standard close to the CL enabling that step up to happen (not in all cases).... but now, lets get down to real business .... Even when the higher leagues can have the riders for their teams how many do they actually employ....and it will have been even less before the young stars program ??

What's interesting about that is that when Scunthorpe were in the third tier if you wanted to use their facilities you had to sign for the club. The change to the asset system was brought in after they joined the Premier League. After NL clubs were denied the right to have assets, a 'training fee' was introduced. For example, if Chad Wirtzfeld rode for the Warriors for a few seasons and then signed for Poole, the Pirates would pay a fixed amount to the Warriors. Not quite as lucrative as owning assets, but a form of financial recompense nevertheless. That, too, has apparently now been dropped.

And of the two clubs, Peterborough seem historically to have an overall fan base that attends much less when they struggle more than KL does... And he obviously owns the place at KL, so more opportunity to make more money from concessions, so even a drop on numbers can still be offset to some degree.. And you can also add in that of the "just twenty" combined home meetings, four will be 'local derbies' between KL and Peterborough, and four more will have Ipswich visiting his tracks, so I can see where he would want to prioritise to ensure a profitable season overall..

Lets remember Kent Royals are EFFECTIVELY a stand alone NL club, as they cannot run the majority of their fixtures as double headers tacked onto their CL meetings as is being done at other clubs. With the vast reduction in standard of riders in 2021, the entertainment value has to be there ...even in the plush surroundings of Central Park, folks will rapidly get disillusioned if 15 heats cannot be completed before the curfew. Will be interesting to see come the end of 2021 just how many NL clubs continue into 2022 ..........to continue the BSPL experiment of the 3 point novice rider scheme.

Why not? If logistics allow it to happen, why not give it a go... I am sure if nothing else the promotion of every meeting would leave no one on the island in any doubt that the IOW were in 'European competition', which should generate plenty of curious interest...

Barry Bishop confirms that the Isle of Wight have staged preliminary talks with the French League!

Joe screen possibly ????

Never gonna happen with Buster bankrolling two clubs.

Agree with "East End Fan" 100%. Most of the GB stars I have had the pleasure to watch didnt need complicated rules to achieve stardom. They were good from day one. Didnt need an NDL to get them a 3 pointer slot or a Rising Star scheme. Turned up at a traingin track , then invited for a second half ride, beat the team reserve and away they went. Most of the 3 pointers being thrust into the "National" league should be learning their trade on a training track or after meeting practice before the public are asked to pay to watch them. The ones that are good enough to race competively for 4 laps without falling off every corner should then be put into a team to entertain the paying public. oops sorry I forgot BSPL are not here to entertain the public ........ not in their mission statement ......having been culpable in closing down two tracks in the past few seasons. Rye House killed off by having to race midweek (Ironically that didnt stop the SGP sooperstars leaving GB speedway )and now IoW have been killed off. So even fewer speeday fans left to support all their great initiatives. Cue ... promoters whingeing about lack of support for their NDL teams and blaming the public for not supporting young riders.

This Rising Star thing is a joke; its just wrong... If they wanted to strengthen the top league all they had to say was that any rider must have attained an average of 6 or above in the Championship before they would be considered in the Premiership which would have resulted in a minimum average of 4 for a reserve in the Premiership keeping the conversion rate at 1.5... That would still leave scope to bring new foreign riders straight into the team on their 4's or 5's or whatever... Also that they had to maintain that 6 or 4 average in that respective league to be considered the following year for the Premiership and then set the build level for Premiership teams to 45 points rather than trying to drag young kids into a league that they may no be ready for... I would much rather see these young riders learning their apprenticeship with track time at a level where they will be competitive at and scoring points rather than the possibility of relying on points coming from other riders falling off or having engine failures... The same could done between the Championship and NDL where the rider must have achieved an average of 6 in the NDL before they could be considered for a Championship team with a conversion rate of 3.0 meaning the NDL rider would come in on a 2.00 to the Championship team and again that they must maintain those averages in either league before they can be considered for selection. Let Championship teams build to 40 points and NDL teams to 35... Newcastle have Barker and Vissing in their team and these two have been known in the past to be able to lets say "ride with some aggression and be rather physical in races" some may even use the phrase "dirty riders" but lets just stick with "Physical" and they also have Joe Alcock as their rising star and I hate to say it but he may be at more risk of getting injured off one of his own riders than one of the opposition. I don't want to see anyone get hurt but IMHO I think it could be a challenge to far for some of these younger more inexperienced riders who don't have the track craft or skill with the associated required track time to learn the skills to get themselves out of trouble... Hope I am proved wrong... However Regards THJ

Crash.net and bikesportnews.com are really good sites for getting the latest news.

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A cunning disguise ! They are hoping that no one will notice its in Russia. Clever lot at BSI.

If GM had a winnable case that they would not be sending out pointless letters or issuing unenforceable threats. Pretty pathetic.

Therein lies the problem - the inept, incompetent and utterly selfish (Rob Godfrey has stated in this weeks Speedy Star that the Premiership and Championship clubs decided that the NDL had to change - quite extraordinary when you think that over half of them don't even have NDL clubs and that Mildenhall and Isle of Wight had no say at all) way this has been handled. I think it is entirely possible that the new entrants might have wanted a lower points limit but we'll simply never know. Islander says that wasn't the case, and certainly Mildenhall's Phil Kirk has said that they did not want a reduction. Its therefore equally entirely possible that had it gone to a vote 39 would have been retained (which maybe why there was no vote). What is certain is that Isle of Wight would not be attracting the support from speedway fans if this had been dealt with with any degree of intelligence and there had been a vote for 35 and they had still pulled out. I wouldn't for a second have questioned such a decision - that it is for an individual promotion and we are talking about by far and away the best in the country - but they would not have been able to point fingers at the BSPL at all.

Why would a change in points limit prevent the other teams from entering the NDL, if this league is solely about development, and in most cases all the meeting of new comers are double header meetings? As I wrote it is because this is not about development because the NDL will always develop riders it is about wage cuts for those riders who go up a league. The same old story.....instead of taking your product and building the fanbase the answer is always to cost cut. Never in my life have I known any business to prosper and grow by cost cutting the core product. Perhaps you didnt read the article in the speedway star for which this response was for, as if that was a meeting to discuss these revised rules, new entrants, we could have bought in to it, accepted it, decided if or if not it was for us and we would still be in the BSPL and looking forward to either racing or putting our license on hold until 2022. But this was not the case - it was all imposed, last minute despite over a year in which to discuss it. Now friends, no business, no organisation, not even my Sea Cadet group would behave in such a rubbish way. This is not leadership this is a haphazard last minute approach to the most import league in speedway. (just my view here) Why should team promotions like Poole, Kings Lynn, Sheffield, Glasgow who have no NL teams, be allowed to vote on NL business? At the end of the day the BSPL have failed in protecting one of its businesses, one of its core responsibilities - the Isle of Wight, it has lost a member and access to a track. Additionally, all new clubs, to any league, may NOT in the first year, at least, vote on any league business - this is why the rules were imposed because they knew that there is no way IOW, Kent, BV, Plymouth (if still there) and Mildenhall would accept this way of running the league. Len Silver should have been invited to every meeting (as per the rules) that involved conversation of the NDL as the leagues representative - stand alone clubs are not permitted to attend such meetings as we are only associates. He was invited to any such meetings. Regards going up... we were told in 2019, that clubs would be invited to attend the 2020/2021Pre-AGM of the CL to see if it was for us, of course this invitation did not arrive. Kent have wanted to go up for years subject to planning and Plymouth applied to go up in 2020 but were not accepted (wrongly in my view) and they reapplied in 2021 and were let in whem Somerset pulled out. Stay safe one and all, and I hpoe you enjoy the season ahead.

I have never seen the point in restrictions in the National League. I remember when the 3rd Division was formed after the war. It was filled with riders of modest ability who could not hack it in the higher leagues, new riders trying to climb the ladder and a few old pre-war riders on their way to retirement. No special rules. Survival of the fittest. It started to produce riders for the upper leagues and continued to do so for many years. That is what the National League should still be doing, new riders having to show they are better than the more experienced to earn places in the Championship/Premiership. Riders with talent do not need complicated rules to help them succeed.