Harry The Goat

I'm with you, waytogo28. I too believe streaming could be a lifesaver, but there seems to be disappointingly little of it happening at present and it doesn't seem very well publicised. I'm amazed that more clubs are not trying it, and that the ones that are are not shouting louder about it. Do they want to get people watching or not? If there *is* a central place to locate available livestreams, I've yet to find it. I had to dig up all the info below myself by laboriously looking through the websites of each club in the Premiership, Championship and NDL. There appear to be just three regular livestreams right now: Glasgow - https://tv.glasgowtigers.co.uk/ (£11.95, next meeting on Friday 2nd July) Edinburgh - https://www.edinburghmonarchs.co.uk/live-stream (£11.99, not sure of next meeting) Poole - https://www.poole-speedway.com/pirates-tv (£9.95, next meeting on Wednesday 30th June) Berwick have used streaming but only for occasional one-off meetings, I think. Don't know why they don't do regular meetings. This week I am planning to visit Poole on Wednesday and Glasgow on Friday while simultaneously remaining in the West Country without leaving my armchair :-)

I agree with everyone - live streaming is such an obvious thing to do (you'd think...). Now that my team (Somerset) has folded, and with Swindon not running this year, I'm looking at travelling a minimum of 2 hours there and 2 hours back to see any live speedway at my nearest tracks (Poole / Wolverhampton / Plymouth). I'm not really up for going such a long distance on a regular basis, so I'll happily pay for a live feed to watch as a 'neutral' supporter. Had to laboriously trawl through the websites of each and every club just to check who was offering a live stream right now. Answer: hardly any of them! Tuned into Edinburgh's meeting last Friday against Redcar and was very impressed with their presentation. If Edinburgh can do this, why can't many other clubs? Now hoping to watch the Glasgow meeting this Friday.

Yes, great images - thanks for posting the link. Michael Lee in Pic 098, I think.

Hey Dickie, the centre green bloke is Rob Dyer, who previously did the June 12th meeting (remember?). He's VERY good. I hope we see him again. Enjoyable meeting. Thought Sheffield rode well and were unlucky to come away with no points.

Good summary there. I agree. But a couple of things on the presentation side have room for improvement IMO: 1) Parade. We've started having just a helmet-free lap from the riders and an out-of-sight coin toss. The 'old' way had a much greater sense of occasion and was far better. 2) Excessive delay between heats (a real bugbear of mine). All the waiting around can get so tedious. A faster pace to a meeting is always more entertaining.

Very enjoyable meeting, some good close racing and very slickly run indeed. All done in LESS than 70 minutes! - 15 heats + 3 track grades + 2 short hold-ups for falls (Vicentin, when leading Heat 10, and Atkins at his 'bogey' second bend in Heat 11). Meeting started early, around 7.25pm, following 7.15pm rider introductions. By 8pm we were starting Heat 10. Meeting finished just after 8.30pm. They should run EVERY meeting like this, even when not trying to beat the weather. It was a terrific pace - exactly what is needed in this sport, instead of the ridiculous long gaps (and silence/inactivity) between heats we usually have to put up with. Vicentin is box office - terrific rider and clearly a character too. Look forward to seeing him ride again. Zack Cook was promising. Behind the scenes, Covatti and Jack Holder were there for them in the pits, spannering. Anders Rowe did really well, although the announcer kept mispronouncing his name(!). Anyone else noticed how Rowe begins races? He's the only rider who looks down at the tapes rather than looking to the side at the poles the tapes are fixed to. I see he only turned 17 last month. He's got great potential. Crowd very thin, as expected, but I think people who didn't come missed a treat.

I found it an enjoyable meeting, more so than I was expecting. Very close up until the last three heats, before which I thought the result could go either way. Well run too - it finished before 9pm - and there were no falls. The only hold-up was when Covatti broke the tapes on his first ride. He didn't seem to be on fire tonight, ditto Kurtz. But Grobauer was impressive, and I'm enjoying watching the reserves Rowe & (particularly) Atkins, who are clearly very keen and trying their utmost and will surely improve their averages noticeably over the course of the year. Schlein very dominant (he's a great rider) and Harris put in a solid performance too, as you'd hope. Crowd noticeably thin though, about the same as last Friday's U21 event. The new(?) on-track announcer is perfectly good but I miss Pete Chamberlain from previous years - anyone know what's happened to him and if he'll be back?

Weather forecast looking ok so far for Wednesday (10th). Let's hope no rain-off again. Pity we haven't got Charles Wright this year. Anyone else notice how well he's performing of late? The season's barely begun but he's scored 82+2 points already! 11 for Redcar on 5th April 11+1 for Peterborough on 1st April 13 for Redcar on 31st March 13 for Redcar on 30th March 13+1 for Redcar on 29th March 9 for Redcar on 23rd March 12 at the Ben Fun Bonanza on 17th March

I did a quick tot-up of the number of home fixtures over the past few years... 2009 - 26 2010 - 23 2011 - 25 2012 - 25 2013 - 27 2014 - 25 2015 - 24 2016 - 27 2017 - 18 2018 - 17 2019 - 14

Yes, you're not alone.

Hope so. There are few enough riders coming back to the team from the season just gone. Just Nico so far. Would be good to have a semblance of continuity, despite dropping down from the PL.

If you think the adult season ticket isn't too enticing, look closer at the student version - £203 for 15 meetings. Whereas you'd pay a total of £210 if you attended all meetings at the £14 per meeting student price. A saving of just £7 over the year. Has this been thought through?

It used to be £2 until this year, when they whacked up the price by 40%!

Thinning fixture lists... Thinning crowds... I wonder if there's a connection? Speaking of things thinning, I went for a haircut yesterday. It's the second one I've needed since the last home league meeting (June 25th).

Huge applause to you BurntFaceMan for all your efforts, and for revealing all this. And what a massive disappointment to hear it hasn't worked out. It's unbelievable that some promoters have not been interested, just unbelievable. Do they have ANY nose for business whatsoever? Sadly, I think you're right - 'doomed' is the right word...

As you may well have seen by now, it's been called off: http://www.somersetrebels.co/news.php?extend.2273.1

I think the lack of regular fixtures is HUGELY important. Currently, each Premiership team has around 15 home meetings scheduled each season (+ two or three more if you happen to make the playoffs or KOC). It's no surprise, therefore, that riders want/need to double up/down. And no surprise that fans give up when there's nothing regular any more, no weekly habit to get into. I mean, if you've got a shop, but you only open for one night every two or three weeks from April to September, can you really expect to stand a chance of making much money? Forty years ago you'd have 35 home meetings a year, 21 heats each meeting (13 for the match + 8 second half), meaning a dedicated fan could see 735 races a year at their local track. Nowadays with 15 home meetings and 15 heats per meeting, that's a total of only 225 races a year. Massive difference. In terms of giving speedway fans what they want, surely at the top of the list is the opportunity to regularly see some actual racing?

Couldn't agree more. Charles would easily have scored more than Claus's current tally of 1 lone point in 2 meetings. This would have affected the outcome tonight... Covatti exceeding all expectations. Vissing the reverse. Good performance by Kings Lynn though. NKI majestic.

I'm disappointed with the news, particularly as regards Jeppesen, who I think's got potential. Was his scoring that bad? HOME - rode in 3 out of 5 meetings, scoring 1, 6+1, and 2+1 AWAY - rode in 5 out of 6 meetings, scoring 3+1, 1, 6, 5+2, and 1+1

Just an observation here. I was amused to spot that rule 12.10 of the 2018 Speedway Regulations states: "In all Official Fixtures, riders must provide and wear a jacket, suit or shirt showing the riders Riding Number on the front and back." Having been to several meetings so far this season at various venues, and seen all Premiership teams in action (bar one), I wonder if anyone else has noticed how often this rule is broken? It's the 'riding number on the front' part which is the issue. Many if not most riders do have them, yes, but odd ones don't (e.g. a heat leader in one particular team never wears one), and in one case an entire team didn't. On other occasions the riding number may become obscured by the neck gear protection that some riders wear, rendering it pointless. The riding numbers themselves seem to be of no standard specification, since they vary in where they're positioned on the body, in size and, occasionally, colour, meaning they're not always easy to read. Can't say I'm particularly bothered myself whether or not riders wear numbers on the front - is anyone? - yet the SCB obviously is because they've written it into their 65-page document. And they take no steps to enforce it.

I recall Kings Lynn pinched a narrow 46-44 win at the OTA only a year ago, so it seems fitting that Somerset has now done the same in reverse. Unexpected though - I didn't think we'd even get a single league point last night. Well done all riders. I think J Holder is proving to be a really good signing this year.

Me too, unfortunately. Still, a miracle could always occur. Couldn't it?

I couldn't agree more. It's 2018. The technology is to hand. Most teams seem to be filming all their meetings anyway, with excellent quality visuals and often plenty of behind the scenes stuff, commentary, interviews etc. Look at the amount of interest in the proboards site, which simply offers live text updates of the score of a meeting - often several hundred or more people will be viewing (which can easily exceed the crowd size at the meeting itself). It's an untapped income stream. Yet no promoter seems interested. Astonishing.

And of course at some meetings you could stick the chequered flag out after ONE lap each race and get pretty much the same results as for four laps!

A very dull meeting indeed. Wish I'd stayed home and saved the money and done something else instead. Racing mostly consisted of all riders following each other for 3.5 laps. Somerset hopeless with no fight in them, except Doyley of course, plus the odd bit of Holder and Wilson-Dean. Allen + Wright + Lawson + Jeppesen = just 7 points total between the four of them. Highlight of the meeting for me was seeing Mitch Shirra interviewed on centre green during the first break. Brilliant rider and a huge name from the 70s/80s for those of us who remember back that far. Good crowd but no way was it as high as 2500+ in my opinion.