HertsRacer

Totally agree with you re conference system. It always amazes me how the regular baseball season consists of 162 games, and there is still interest as to reaching the play-offs right up to the last game.

The fact that Rye House have pulled the plug is so far based on rumour. If true, and it may well be that they have approached the BSPA with their intention , I suspect there are ongoing moves behind the scenes to come up with a rescue package that will at least enable them to finish the season.

Sadly many tracks continue today only because they know that if they were to close they would never get planning permission to re-open again due to noise and the close proximity of houses these days. .

Its an odd one. In the late 60's I was a regular at Reading who ran on a Monday. They averaged 6000+ in those days. Also went to Romford on Thursdays who averaged about 5000. Not much difference, people worked the next day and kids went to school. Today I can walk down our High Street Mondays to Thursdays evenings and all the pubs and restaurants are empty, and the place is like a ghost town. I don't think its just about money as our town is fairly affluent, it seems that people just don't want to go out midweek these days.

Notice in this weeks Speedway Star that a couple of enquiries have already been make re the possibility of speedway returning to Brafield. Answer seems to be no in the short term, but maybe in a couple of years time.

Rye House will never work as a mid week track. The trouble is much of their support is not local but from all over Hertfordshire. People just don't have the time or inclination to get home from work, change, grab a bite to eat and rush out again. The chaos on Govia trains at present is also doing the club no favours.

Agreed, with attendances now in their hundreds rather than thousands, and many not buying programmes or printing off their own race cards, it now does not appear good value in terms of return to place adverts in programmes. Most of our advertisers did so as a sense of loyalty to help keep the magazine going rather than any potential benefit to them. If we had raised the price for advertising along with the rise in printing costs, I'm sure their loyalty may well have been tested. As Mr. Snackette posted, no reason why a simple race card with accompanying adverts cannot be produced. I have many non league football programmes from the 1950/60's when this was the norm with just the team line ups and the rest local adverts.

I doubt the advertising revenue makes a profit. I used to contribute to a local magazine which was printed on glossy paper with colour photos. There were a few more pages than your average programme, but the printing costs for about 500 issues was about £950. The charge for advertising was £25 for a quarter page (The most popular), £50 for half a page, and a full page was £100 (The least popular). The revenue from this helped but didn't fully cover the printing costs.

Quite agree. Today programmes are printed on glossy paper with coloured photos and packed with adverts. In the past they were just cheaply produced with half a dozen pages consisting of a scoresheet, something written by the promoter, fixtures/league tables and any bits of latest news. That's basically all you need.

Agree, in my youth I was an avid collector of programmes of speedway, football and ice hockey going back to the 1920's. Still get them out occasionally to look at them. I love them from a historical point of view. The last time I went to a premier league football match it was more like a glossy magazine full of stuff that didn't interest me, for which they wanted £6. I didn't bother. Gone are the days when programmes were a cheap and simple addition to the match day experience.

Owners Phil Fry and Charlie Walker. Record 1 outing, 1 win, so worth a flutter if you like that sort of thing.

Barretts letter may be an attempt to preempt the Government's proposal to shift the responsibility of dealing with any noise nuisance onto the developer rather than the venue when new houses are built near an existing music or sports venue.

Pretty sure the Greyhound Stadium would have been the first place the promoters looked at to replace Brooklands all those years ago. If there was any chance of speedway at Romford Greyhound Stadium it would have happened before now. As you say it would have been successful, no doubt.

You'll be pleased to know there's nothing wrong with your memory. Ron rode for the Tigers between 1962-4.

Yes, I've always wondered what would have happened if they had not been forced to close. When Custom House was sold, would they have bought West Ham's First Division license instead of Ipswich. As for the Greyhound Stadium, no chance of speedway there I'm affraid. The houses are even closer than at Brooklands.

Very sad news. Remember Ron riding for Yarmouth against Norwich"B" in the first meeting I ever saw back in 1961.

Although it is generally thought that West Ham Hawks ran their home meetings at Dagenham in 1938, I can find no evidence to support this. In the local newspapers their home meetings are listed being held at West Ham Speedway on Friday's starting at 8-15pm, and in the few match reports that appear there is no mention of Dagenham. There were also some programmes of the Hawks sold recently on E-Bay showing they ran at Custom House. I wasn't aware that Dagenham's track had lights. If they didn't then they couldn't have staged meetings in the evening. Can anybody shed any light on this?

Remember the Czech meeting well. Probably one of the most exciting matches I've ever seen. Over 10,000 packed into the stadium, and I think someone forgot to tell the Czech riders that the safety fence was made of concrete the way they were flying around it. Also followed the Bombers at West Ham, but with both the team and the stadium living on borrowed time it was all a bit sad watching really.

Can't believe it was 50 years ago that I was a regular at Brooklands. Was at the Crewe match and supported them throughout their sadly short existence. Great times.

Interesting article in the Daily Mail today that BT is preparing to give up their right to show Premier League football due to losing over 5000 subscribers as a result of having to raise prices to the customer to pay for it. Though they will be bidding in this years auction for future rights, they said they wouldn't go beyond the price they thought it was worth to BT, and that BT would still succeed without showing the Premier League. If this happens might it mean that more money could be available to spend on the other sports in their portfolio?

Quite agree. Also with so many guests last year you had half a team with official race suits and half not, which really did look amateurish.

Sorry Hawk, we posted at exactly the same time. Yes I remember that person who killed off the Bombers then moved away. As you say it just takes one individual.

Maybe only at Swindon at present, bearing in mind that any new stadium is a replacement and that a stadium already exists. Mildenhall have had problems in the past, and with so many new houses being built there are bound to be some near enough to tracks for the noise to be audible.

Don't think this has been mentioned elsewhere, but on the BBC website there is a report that the music industry is hailing a major victory after ministers vowed to change planning rules in England to protect venues from complaints about noise. In the future It will be down to developers to address noise issues if they opt to build homes near a long-established music venues. The report also warns that this was not just confined to music, but also regarding complaints being made about the ringing of church bells as well as about noise emanating from speedway stadiums and even farms.

Don't think this has been mentioned elsewhere, but on the BBC website there is a report that the music industry is hailing a major victory after ministers vowed to change planning rules in England to protect venues from complaints about noise. In the future It will be down to developers to address noise issues if they opt to build homes near a long-established music venues. The report also warns that this was not just confined to music, but also regarding complaints being made about the ringing of church bells as well as about noise emanating from speedway stadiums and even farms.