Robert Lee

Does this sound familiar? Developer buys popular local property which stands on prime development site. Property catches fire a week later, and Fire Brigade has trouble reaching it due to mysterious obstacles in the access road. Fire put out and building is salvageable, investigators are sure it's arson and plan return visit to find the evidence. Next day it is completely flattened by persons unknown using bulldozer on hire to nearby recycling company, owned by guess who? Yep, aforesaid developer. Midlanders will have been reading the saga of The Crooked House, and it even made the national news. How many speedway stadia have gone that way.

Normal procedure at the late lamented Coventry was for both teams to bring out their bikes and be presented in front of the main stand. When the intros were over, they would all get on their bikes and do as many practice laps as they wanted until the CO (or later Colin Pratt) appeared on-track to signal the end of practice. Usually 5-10 minutes. Strictly no practice starts on the bends or the CO would have your wotsits for garters.

Of course people are entitled to express their views. Just saying that some of the extreme personal insults and character assassinations you often see on here will not make anyone better-disposed to speedway.

It occurs to me that if I were the boss of the stadium owners and I read all this, any good intentions I had would go straight out of the window. Can see similarities with Sandhu and Cov. People have debated for years whether Sandhu is good or evil, but if I were him and I'd spent good money putting together a winning team and tarting up a clapped-out stadium, then I read what people on here say about me, I'd think "sod 'em, let them find another mug to subsidise their crappy sport".

Been away for a while and saw that Poole 2018 is approaching 700 pages, so thought it was time to start again............... I remember the days when Coventry used to give Poole a run for their money in numbers of boring pages.

BMR mainly involved in touring car racing these days, as the official Subaru factory team. I think Warren Scott only drives in Rallycross these days after a stint in BTCC. Can't be short of a bob or two, they run 3 cars and the budget is reckoned to be £500k to £1million per car per season, plus they employ probably the highest paid driver (Jason Plato) and last year's champion Ash Sutton. They also run cars in the Renault Clio support series. Mind you, just because they are spending big doesn't necessarily mean they are not running at a loss............

Bit of a Whoosh there. My fault, I should have made it clear that my transponder comment was tongue-in-cheek (is there an emoji thingy for that?). However, a £20 transponder from Maplins might not last very long in the speedway environment. Then there is the "box" that you mention - i.e. the hardware and software infrastructure to make the transponder useful. A leeetle bit more than £20 for that. Anyway, fascinating as these discussions are, they are purely acedemic. Anything that costs money to improve the sport is not going to happen, because, to paraphrase Alastair Darling, there is no money left. Would you invest in the future of speedway? Happy days.

Anticipating and jumping are the same thing. If the tapes are not broken, it should be no offence and the race continues. Pulling back and rolling is what gives you the real advantage, but it is easy to detect. As someone said above, ask Hans Andersen.... On the other hand, I have never seen James Serjeant get a roller, yet he is persecuted by refs for being a good anticipator and/or having better reactions than others. (I have no connection with James, never met him). Spot on. Simple and effective, without transponders. Don't know what those are, but I'll bet they cost as much as a speedway engine (well, an old JAP at least).

I think there is confusion between movement before the start (after the green light is on) and anticipating the start. Movement was banned, I think, to prevent rolling starts, an entirely different issue to anticipating the tapes. Rolling gives a huge advantage because the bike is moving forward when the tapes go up. As long as the start marshal does his job and makes sure all four are not more than xmm from the tapes, then rolling is impossible unless they pull back a bit, which is exactly what they used to do. Pulling back is easy to spot, so then you line them up again once only - any movement after that means exclusion and no replacement rider. Anticipating the start should not be an offence, it shows either lightning reactions or risk-taking, the risk being that they will break the tapes and be excluded.

Ah, yes, but you are a woman, you're trained for this at your mother's knee. We blokes can always go behind a bush, so our bladders have never had to learn restraint. Regarding track staff, aren't they mostly volunteer? If so, they'd come above both riders and spectators in my pecking order (P**ing order??).

Well, 4 teams actually. Last time anyone looked, Swindon didn't have a stadium.... 4 teams out of 9 facing major difficulties.

Blimey, Neil, what with fat finger syndrome and not knowing your Hymns Ancient and Modern, I think you should stick to speedway promoting..(please)

I think people may have missed the point of Mr Watson's post. Clever as he undoubtedly is, he didn't compose the verses but quoted those of a Victorian composer, Christopher Cox. Set to music, these became a popular funeral hymn...........

Must confess I've only just seen the result, and I haven't read the previous 40-odd pages, but it did occur to me that there must be something wrong with the race format and/or scoring system when a one-man team can finish second in a major international team event.....

And incidentally, a lot more than either of the previous owners of Cov.