E I Addio

It would have been a simple thing for Horton to e-mail Barker a copy of the contract and ask Barker to e-mail his confirmation by return. Pretty much standard business practice, would have taken minutes to do and removed any doubt. Its difficult to understand why a businessman like Mick Horton would not do something like that.

Correct.

Its got nothing to do with whats in writing, its do with what is in the minds of the parties. All a written contract does is remove any doubt or confusion about the terms of the contract. As Midland Robin said terms and contract are effectively the same thing but payment has to be agreed.

If that were true how come Peterboro agreed to let Lakeside have Piotr Swiderski on loan without making any noises about selling him ? If they knew they weren't going to use him he would be the first one to try to sell off if your theory were true.

I was offered a frontal lobotomy but I'd rather have a bottle in front o' me.

Do you seriously believe that no rider has ever taken legal advice on this subject ? There are a variety of reasons why it is highly unlikely that any rider would take to the ECHR, quite apart from the legal aspect. One is the cost and another is the time it would take to get through the English courts first, and then get permission to go to the ECHR which already has a massive backlog of cases to deal with.. Another is the fact that once you start taking promoters to court it can have an adverse effect on one's career in the long term e.g getting team places. If a rider such as NKI aged 30 were to run this all the way to the ECHR he would probably be winding down his topflight career by the time it actually gets heard and would gain little if anything in real terms. The asset system is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

This discussion and some old programmes reminded be of a race that just about sums Briggo up. It was at West Ham and Briggo was against Anders Michanek. Now, Michanek was one of speedways real hardmen, even the ruthless Olle Nygren described him as a "hard bastard" so he was definitely no pushover to say the least. Michanek made the gate and Briggo tried to get through on the inside, but Mich clamped him against the white line, so Briggo tried the outside, leaning on Michanek but Michanek elbowed him out, then Briggo, who had had enough of it by now switched back to the inside and bulldozed Michanek out of the way as if he was a rag doll. The amazing thing about all this was that it all happened on the first two bends rather than two or three laps and Briggo went into the back straight in front. I can't ever remember seeing anything like it. That was the amazing thing about Briggo. he has so much upper body strength he could just flick the bike around and get it to go wherever he pointed it. I would have loved to have seen some of the clashes between Briggs and Fundin when they were both at their peak, but sadly it was before my time. Fundin was well on the way down by the time I got to see him and even Briggo was past his best but still pretty amazing. Anybody remember them at their absolute peak ?

One of the main differences between this situation and the Bosman case at the moment is that the riders have not lost any money because the season has not started. Bosman had lost earnings so he was able to sue for that loss, but you can't sue for what you haven't lost. You saw how messy it all got a couple of years ago when people started going off to court. Allen Trump, who started the litigation thinking he had a solid case finished up going out of speedway. That's the sort of unforeseen consequences you risk in going to court on this type of thing. Riders have more important things to concentrate on than getting involved with court cases that may have all kinds of unforeseen repercussions on their careers., not to mention the costs involved with lawyers. It will all blow over.

You may well be right about the points I have highlighted but the other side of the coin is that other clubs may get the message that when you deal with Frost you go by the book and not cut corners or make assumptions in the way that KL possibly have done. None of us have a crystal ball so we can't tell what the long term effects will be for Peterboro, for better or worse, but in the short term it seems that the ball in in Frost's court and there is not much anyone else can do about it as far as I can see. It will all sort itself out before the season starts though.

That's an interesting point. I suppose their is no rule or obligation for Frost to declare his team until the day before the start of the season (or whenever the deadline is) if he doesn't want to. That might be seen as unfair to the riders but its not breaking any rules as far as I can see, especially as only one team, I think, is fully declared at present. KL and Swindon can jump up and down if they want but that's tough. He is not stopping any rider from earning a living because their is no living to be earned until the season starts, so as long as the Panthers team is declared by whatever date they have to be declared they will not have done anything wrong. Thoughts ?

Are you seriously telling us that Frost & co are so dim they only had one provisional team in mind before the AGM ? I very much doubt it. They have been in the game long enough to have several potential line-ups in mind depending on the outcome of the AGM, just as most other promoters do. Peterboro weren't the only club whose team building plans the new rule affected, but the others had alternatives in mind. I would be astonished if Panthers didn't. The bigger question is why riders don't want to ride for Peterboro. Its certainly not the money, yet at various times NKI, Swiderski, Hans. and Batch have all shown reluctance to ride for them. I can't readily think of any other club that seems to have this problem. except arguably Belle Vue for obvious reasons.

He is the original Big Mouth. Wouldn't surprise me at all if he was the main reason for Ed's drop in form last year.

Apparently not. His case is further proof that riding in the PL doesn't always improve a rider. It didn't do much for David Howe, doesn't seem to have taken Ben Barker a lot further forward and Kauko has dropped his average from what it was before he started doubling up with Leicester. Maybe Rob Mear is doing the right thing by keeping his day job and concentrating fully on the Elite League. Nemo is good enough to do a decent job as captain at Leicester and will no doubt be first choice of guest for Lakeside when Ritchie Worrall is riding for Newcastle as Ritchie's average will be higher after the first set of Greensheets. Sadly, it looks like Stuart Robson's EL career is over though, although he probably still has a few good years left in him to continue to be a powerful force at Newcastle. Considering Lakeside bought him for next to nothing he has been a pretty good investment for the Hammers and loan fees have probably gone a long way to covering what Lakeside paid for him originally. One of speedway's nice guys. It was announced straight after the AGM that Lakeside were in negotiations with PK with permission of the Wolves management.

I totally agree with you. He may make more progress in d/u role with a PL club but the other side of the coin is that at least Lakeside will have him available for all their fixtures and not have to rely on the uncertainty of a PL guest when there is a fixture clash, especially as a fair number of PL clubs have the same race night as Lakeside. They already look like having Ritchie Worrall doubling up at Newcastle and it would be difficult for any club to do well with two PL guest coming in for the reserves at crucial times.

So its a joke having the British Final at a track where technical skills are necessary is it ? Are you suggesting that its unimportant for the British Champion to have any technical skill ?

Perhaps its now just a matter of time before any rider more than 6 points behind the leading scorer after 3 heats gets the chance to play the joker and go out for double points in his next ride. Don't rule it out while Olsen is in charge.

Of course.

What do you mean ? Of course speedway has moved on. We now have the tactical ride. If that isn't progress I don't know what is. I don't think you have watched the Youtube clip. He did not out-think Mauger. he just rolled forward from 6 feet away and the referee let the tapes go. That doesn't involve thought. it just involves a referee who had already handled the meeting appallingly, letting the tapes go when his fellow countryman approached them. If you go back to all the World Champions from Tommy Price in 1949 to Mauger in 1972 some of them had some luck on World Final Night but it is undeniable that without exception they were consistently among the worlds best. Two weeks after Szczakiel won the World title he rode in the World Cup and was the only rider that failed to score. A year later he again rode in the World Cup and failed to score. He never qualified for another World Final. That does not suggest he was a genuine world class rider, as opposed to someone that got lucky on the night. Egon Mullers win in 1983 was also shrouded in some suspicion. If you are looking to find the rider who is genuinely the best in the world the Grand Prix system is the only way. As Philip Rising says, the WEorld Champion should be the best rider of the year, not the best rider of the night.

Justin Sedgmen doesn't have a place and has tweeted that it looks like he won't be back in the UK in 2013 even though he wants to.

Oh I agree TWK, Briggo has been there done it and got the t-shirt while Darcy has still got it all to do. What I meant was that Darcy excites me in the way that Briggo used to. He doesn't bother with all the technicalities, he just goes out and wins in the old-fashioned way by keeping the throttle open longer than anyone else. That's why Briggo is regarded by so many including me as the greatest.

I saw the last of his British Championship wins at West Ham (I think it was the last). Still have the programme. Absolutely stunning performance. The No 2 gate wasn't working. Ivan Mauger struggled to a second place off of it and everyone else was either third or last off No2 gate when their turn came. Then towards the end of the meeting out comes Briggo off gate 2 and shatters the opposition on his way to his fourth win of the night.. Then he went on to a 15 point maximum literally a class above the rest of the field. Probably the most memorable performance I have seen. People rave over Mauger and Rickardson etc, who were admittedly consistent but to me, when Briggo hit his best form there was never another rider in speedway like it , at least not until Darcy Ward came along.

That's not quite the point of the discussion. The rules require that the starting marshall and the referee ensure that there is a fair and equal start. You may take the view if you wish, that its OK to play the odds on getting a roller but frankly when we are talking about a run -off to decide the highest honour in speedway I think most fans would want to see the best rider win, not the one who takes advantage of a dodgy starting procedure that did not comply with the requirement for a fair and equal start. We all know about Polish referee's even in modern times.. The real point of the debate is not Mauger -v-Szczakiel but the One-off World Final -v- the GP system. My point is that there will always be questionable refereeing decisions but a GP series evens out the luck element. If you take a couple of modern examples riders like Antonio Lindback and Freddie Lindgren are capable of winning a GP but few , if any fans would argue they could genuinely be regarded as World Champions, at least not yet anyway. For me the Szczakiel win was the start of a slide that was compounded by Egon Muller's 1983 win and made the case for a GP system with rounds in each country.

The question really is DID Puk ACTUALLY sign such a contract ? If he didn't we are talking about a hypothetical situation. If he did then its difficult to discuss without knowing exactly what it says but I very much doubt, for a number of reasons that the sort of contract you mention actually exists, but of course we don't know so we can only speculate. As far as I know most riders sign a fairly standard BSPA contract. EDIT: On a different point. what's happening to Ryan Sullivan ? I thought he moved back to England and wanted to ride over here. He is the sort of class act British speedway needs and I, for one, will be disappointed if he doesn't turn up somewhere.

No, Ian the 1973 World Final run-off was the biggest stitch up in the history of speedway. In front of 140,000 Poles there was no way a Pole would be prevented from winning. That was the meeting when Dave Lanning made his famous comment that the Poles were making up the rules as they went along. He was not reprimanded for that so one must accept the validity of it. Look at the youtube clip. The riders approach the tapes, the start marshal doesn't even put the riders under starter orders when the Pole rolls forward and the referee lets the tapes go giving the Pole a flyer and catching the usually sharp gating Mauger by surprise. The Polish attitude is shown after the crash: Mauger is lying unconscious on the track and for all anybody knew at that stage his life could have been hanging in the balance but the race was not stopped but instead the Pole, in a disgraceful display of triumphalism allows his bike to drift wide on the next lap, missing the medics bu inches and showering the unconscious Mauger and the medics with shale. That meeting was the beginning of the end for the old one-off World Final.www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQplGWLW7Zw (EDIT if it won't come up just type 1973 World Final run-off -Youtube in your search engine and you should get it.)

Whether its unreasonable doesn't matter. The law says he has no say in it and that's all there is too it. You may well take the view that the "the law is an ass" (to quote Charles Dickens) but its still the law. Freedom of employment and all that. I am not saying its right or wrong but that's the way it is.