John Leslie

Hopwood, Stoneman and Purchase

Bradford Bulls Rugby team have been liquidated. It's the 3rd time the club has gone bust in five years, but this time no one wanted to save them. What's the future for Odsal? Has it been developed too far for Speedway to ever return? http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2017-01-03/bradford-bulls-rugby-league-club-liquidated/

I remember asking the same question about a dodgy-looking hairdresser in 1998.

That suggests he is a director of that particular limited company. I could get a job as managing director of Tesco, but it doesn't mean I own Tesco. i could even pay £25ish quid to companies house and set up a company called "My own Tesco Ltd" and be the sole shareholder and appoint myself managing director... but unless my own tesco owns a few thousand shops I'm not going to be voted retailer of the year.

Chris Morton never owned Belle Vue. He was only a co-promoter. His fellow co-promoter David Gordon was the 100% shareholder. But anyway their speedway licence was annulled at the AGM, as were both their promoters licences. So neither can be a promoter, although I suppose they could be employed in an unlicenced role.

Thought Shovvy would be too busy breathing a sign of relief rather than trolling this thread. After all it's good news for both Belle Vue and Poole. From a Poole point of view this has to be good news. If Pairman had bought BV, how much time would he still want to devote to Poole? If you've been driving a Fiat Punto and suddenly get to buy a Ferrari, you're not going to be too bothered about still taking the Punto to the car wash every week when you can be driving your new Ferrari instead. From the BV point of view, the Pairman/Morton bid was apparently always 3rd choice out of the 4 bidders (and the 4th bidder was just a pipe-dream for someone who hadn't really got the money). With them out of the running the other two consortium bidders, which I believe are almost the same people, can get on with forming a consortium and finalise the deal and move forward.

Sounds like some eye-watering sponsorship deals at Eastbourne. I would imagine the lubricant is for their Pipe!

Not looking good at Lakeside. After plummeting 2 divisions, I'd have expected Lakeside to build an exciting young team to challenge for the play-offs, not the wooden spoon.

If they just name one of the 3.00ers, or nab Nathan Stoneman, this is going to be the worst game of hangman ever

Sure it's not _ _ V_ _ _ _ S_ _ ?

Not knocking Lee in any way. I do most of my watching around the Midland tracks so I've seen a lot of Lee over the years and he's a good lad. He's one that will always help out team-mates. The NL can't all be full of promising 15-year-old newbies. The league needs its share of Lees. (He's no older than Pipe's first choice David Wallinger anyway)

Thought it was pretty well known that Buster Chapman is the new owner of Leicester? It was made clear that he would have to put someone else in as promoter to run the club for him to avoid being seen as having a conflict of interests with his other club King's Lynn. Strange though that the promoter is someone who was a promoter under the failed Hemsley regime, Aren't the Belle Vue promoters banned from doing the same?

To be fair, as a 34-year-old who has been riding 13 years, Lee is more one of the "elder statesmen" than a raw novice. Notice the comments on the press release are all from Jayne Moss. Looks like this signing was made by Jayne after bossman Pipe went off on his hiatus when his choice of reserves Burton & Wallinger were poached elsewhere.

Kyle Bickley is of course another promising 15-year-old who will come in to help cover the shortage of riders, and hopefully Sam Bebee will be back soon.

See existing thread already running on this topic http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=83350&p=2903375 The question has been answered there. This duplicate needs locking by a moderator

Let's have a try at finding these 25ish riders who are being forced out of the NL... We had 12 teams last year (84 riders) and we have 12 teams this year (though 2 are different teams) so still 84 riders. So far so good. We'll start with the 84 existing riders. I reckon 5 are no longer NL eligible due to having higher league averages. (Clegg, Morris, Ellis, Carr, Branford) and at least 6 have retired/taken time out of NL. (O Greenwood, Blacklock, Speight, Chessell, Knight, Campos) We're now down to 73 riders and 84 places to fill. 46 of last year's riders have re-signed for teams (Williamson, Woolley, Wajtkneckt, Perry, Bacon, Hume, Ritchings, Parkinson-Blackburn, Rutherford, Burton, Wallinger, Davey, D Greenwood, Dwyer, Walker, R Andrews, Wood, Powell, Harris, Baseby, Cockle, Smart, Widman, Dugard, Cupitt, Bowen, Ayres, Thomas, Verge, Clifton, Bailey, Greaves, Kinsley, Hampshire, Whitmore, Halsey, Armstrong, Coles, Bowtell, Ruddick, Morley, Priest, Hunter, Wilson, Atkin, Phillips) So 27 of last year's riders still to get a place, 38 spaces still to fill. Belle Vue haven't named a single rider yet pending confirmation of the new owners, but I think we can safely say Bewley, Payne & Shuttleworth would make decent heatleaders again... I also have it on good authority that Smith, Hopwood and B Andrews have places confirmed at clubs who haven't yet announced their signing. So just 21 of last year's riders left, and 32 spaces to fill. Let's have a close look at the 21 who are ..erm...fighting to squeeze into the mere 32 places! K Hughes - Will be in demand. Fits at Buxton, Kent, King's Lynn or Plymouth. J Shanes - Again will be in demand. Fits at Buxton, Kent, King's Lynn or Plymouth E Perks - Again will be in demand. Fits at Buxton, Kent, King's Lynn or Plymouth T Stokes - Believed to be taking a year out, but would still fit at the above teams N Stoneman - Again will be in demand. Fits at Buxton, Kent, King's Lynn or Plymouth D Mason - 40 year old on the downward spiral. Possibly ready for retirement. Would fit BV, Bux, Kent, KL, Lakeside, P'mouth or Stoke. L Dicken - age 38. Only came of out retirement to help short-handed Buxton & may retire again. (would still fit 7 clubs) G Cottham - again no youngster with no scope for improvement, but still fits for 7 teams if anyone fancies him. R Terry-Daley - Fits at 7 of the 10 clubs who still have spaces. I'd expect him to get a place. S Tedham - age 36. Fits at 8 of the 10 clubs who still have spaces, if any think he's better than a 3.00 youngster. Stoke ? J Purchase - Fits at 8 of the 10 clubs who still have spaces, if any think he's better value than a 3.00 youngster J Halder - Fits at 9 of the 10 clubs who still have spaces. He's young, could Birmingham be interested? P Burnett - Came out of retirement to help a struggling club. likely to reitre again, unless Bux or Stoke think he's better than a 3.00 newcomer C Hay - Not young. Fits all 10 clubs with spaces remaining, if any think he's better than a 3.00 newcomer A Mellish - Not young. Fits all 10 clubs with spaces remaining, if any think he's better than a 3.00 newcomer B Basford - Fits all 10 clubs with spaces remaining. Almost certainly one will take him on. D Holt, R Parker, M Saul, C Locke, M Leek - all failed to reach the minimum 3.00 average, so can always come in as a 3.00 uncontracted rider anywhere. So that's everyone accounted for. They can all be fitted in somewhere. And even if they are all used we'll still need to find another 11 new riders. (The fact is several of the above 21 riders will retire or not be considered good enough for NL, so we'll need more than 11). Thankfully we have some newcomers/returnees to fill the gaps (Lawlor, Extance, Brennan, Govier, Cook, Mountain, Jenkins, Boxall and Atkins) but more are still needed.

You need to read back a bit. No one has offered any opinion on whether they are keen on David Mason or not. The thing is, Gustix made a silly claim that 25(ish) of last years NL riders (presumably including David Mason) won't be able to get a place in this year's NL due to the points limit being wrong. This led him to the equally silly and erroneous claim that the NL is on a "downward spiral". This of course has been shown to be complete nonsense. Most knowledgable fans have looked at the team building, made the calculations and have worked out that the points limit is pretty much spot on. The NL looks to be competitive and strong. Just the one person keeps on trolling, but has been unable to say what he thinks the points limit should be, or even list who these (non-existent) 25ish riders who can't get a team place are.

He's just posting absolute crap (as normal) and getting badly shown up. He doesn't seem to be familiar with the phrase "when you're in a hole, stop digging".

So, despite some clown spamming this thread with nonsense about 30 riders being put out of work, you reckon there's a place for every 3.00+ rider and we still won't have enough riders to get everyone up to the 39 point limit? I'm a little more optimistic. I reckon we can have full employment and almost all teams will be close to 39.

There's nothing like a fake retirement and comeback to help the old self-publicity. At least we can look forward to the return of our favourite single-paragraph ego-massaging press releases which remind us how the manager is far more important than any of the riders.

Exactly. We know that 12 NL teams will give permanent employment to 84 riders. It can't be any more or less than 84 at any one time. We've also shown mathematically that a 39 (ish) point limit is the best to ensure that the 84 places go to the 84 best NL standard riders. There's nothing in dispute there...basically nothing else to discuss. Anyone who can't grasp the basic facts and babbles on about 35 riders missing out (whilst being unable to name these riders nor explain in what way they are missing out) must be a worry for society. It's like the demented old woman in the high street shouting at the pigeons. Everyone knows it's a barking mad thing to do, no one knows why she does it, but we're all just glad it's not us.

Totally irrelevant to this topic of course, but a look back at the supporters who watched the original National League in 1932. 1932 Speedway fans

Good of you to try to make sense of his factually inaccurate nonsense, but of course we all know that because there are 6 points in every race, the mean team average for any team in any league is 42. (i.e. 6 pts divided by 4 riders in a race x 7 riders in a team x 4 rides in an average) So any league wishing to maintain the exact same riders for the following season needs a limit of roughly 42. However we know that the NL doesn't maintain the same riders every yeat, it develops new riders to move upwards, and so several riders like Ellis, Clegg, Morris, Carr, Branford etc need to be factored out as they move up a league, and new blood comes in at the bottom end. Take out (say) the 5 riders above who become ineligible as they move up on approx 9pt+ averages and replace them with 5 newcomers on 3.00 averages and that's a total reduction of 30 points, or approx 2.5 pts per team (12 teams). A 42 point average less these 2.5pts brings us to approx 39.5 , and bearing in mind others who also may drop out (retiring Jake Knight etc) we can see that 39 is about the right limit to keep the league operating at it's maximum strength and to allow the NL to keep doing the excellent job of developing riders while providing high quality racing.

Just had a look at the teams in the Football League Division One....Scunthorpe United, Fleetwood Town, Milton Keynes Dons.....surely there are better teams in England than those? Remember when Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney played in Football League Division One? They played for the top teams not lowly teams like MK Dons and Scunthorpe. Football has really gone downhill.... In those days we had Manchester United, Tottenham, Arsenal in League division one.....now we have Fleetwood and MK in league one.....terrible. Oh no, of course....I'm jesting No one would be stupid enough to confuse the Football League division one (top flight) of Matthews' and Finney's day with the League one (third division) of today, no more than anyone would be stupid enough to confuse the Speedway National League of 1950s (top league) with the Speedway National League of today (third division).... would they? You'd have to be pretty dim not to know that the division one in Football that Matthews and Finney played in is now called the Premier League, and the National League in Speedway that Fundin and Duggan rode in in now called the Premiership.

Clueless...totally clueless.