Fast Track Riders

[superguest 194]

Says Norrie Allen when he took over as manager of the Lions. He said on the Lions website. That they had lots of talent and would be a great asset to the club and I have worked with the for a number of years.

It looks like the talent is a little faded, to say the least.

Couldn't give two hoots what they say, like you we stand by our own opinions. I am sure we have been around long enough to know how the sport works.

 

Leicesters team is all about balance, in previous years they would have had a high scoring reserve to counter lower averaged heat leaders. Thus, teams with strong heat leaders are much stronger this year as they are not having to come up against strong bottom ends.

 

Kings Lynn have spent money to improve their NL team, and are getting a double benefit I guess, but why shouldnt they? However, as of next year - with a much better idea of where riders are ability wise this season, the draft will be fairer and teams who haven't invested in British riders will now be more inclined too.

Edited May 3, 2014 by superguest

[Hunters 210]

I have kept daily records of the Reserves Averages but unlike Manchesterpaul I try to follow the Greensheet method, ie No Guest rides as they are all 'Away' matches and distort comparison and no bonus points as they are only for payment purposes and have no score relevance. This is how they work out,

Kerr 7.75

Blackbird 7.00

Newman 6.93

Ellis 5.85

Garrity 5.12

Worrall 5.05

Neilsen 5.03

Morris 4.93

Sarjeant 4.76

Starke 4.75

Morley 4.62

Rose 4.62

Halsey 4.00

Perry 3.91

Jacobs 3.71

Lambert 3.20

Richings 2.40

Clegg 2.27

Smart 2.00

Greenwood 1.89

Reade 1.80

 

I don't know how the Star adds up to 44 for Blackbird because he has 42 from his 5 matches. I have not bothered to check the others.

[manchesterpaul 447]

 

The averages for the current 20 fast track riders attached to a team are as below. Still a very limited number of guest rides have taken place by non-attached and indeed attached riders so there's no point listing them at the moment.

They are current up to and including Monday 28th April and i compiled them using the Speedway Star match reports.

'Hunters' the averages i list do NOT include guest appearances see my quote above.

As with my last entry i drew attention to the only significant difference in a riders average with guest rides, be that an increase or decrease, however i clearly state guest rides are not included in the list.

 

 

I have kept daily records of the Reserves Averages but unlike Manchesterpaul I try to follow the Greensheet method, ie No Guest rides as they are all 'Away' matches and distort comparison and no bonus points as they are only for payment purposes and have no score relevance. This is how they work out,
I don't know how the Star adds up to 44 for Blackbird because he has 42 from his 5 matches. I have not bothered to check the others.

I'll double check Blackbirds tomorrow, i do proof check to a good degree but not claiming perfection especially with sources differing in their listing of race results. Do note that even over just this small selection of 30 plus FT riders there are discrepancies between the Speedway Star and Speedway Updates. This includes where two riders finishing second and fourth have their positions reversed in the Updates site.

 

I know from experience of the Updates site that, whilst it's a truly fantastic service for fans and it gets syndicated to at least two major sites, it does contain some howlers and quite a few mistakes. Certain contributors have a high propensity for errors. I'm not saying the Speedway Star is faultless but i've got to lean towards the 'professional' of the two. The odd point, ride or bonus point that is not correct would not heavily affect the averages. I know from when i used to do league tables on my website that even the BSPA used to make mistakes (very basic ones at times) in their compilations and i alerted them more than once.

 

As touched upon earlier i steer clear of technical team building averages with their percentages added or deducted and/or rolling averages. I certainly for SPORTING PERFORMANCE indicators include bonus points and one can't deny that in the very vast majority of races team mates don't race each other when they are placed next to one another, which is indeed why riders get PAID for not doing so with bonus points. I certainly give thanks and credit to Speedway Star for adhering to this age old tradition of publishing them as they always have been where they list each teams average in their magazine (and also the list of top averages).

 

For those who want to know the team building averages and ranking of draft riders which change monthly they are of course available on the BSPA site. But what isn't available is the current season's sporting performance barometer of averages for each rider for their respective team, including bonus points for reasons stated. Hopefully when the Speedway Star publish their first weekly team averages of the season they will include Fast Track riders averages? I'm awaiting that with interest and hope they do.

Edited May 3, 2014 by manchesterpaul

[SCB 0]

Well, apart from when he rode EL for Belle Vue of course.

If you're going to use guest bookings you have just binned pretty much the top 10 draft riders from being in the draft.

 

He's never been in a declared EL 1-7

[Hunters 210]

Some interesting comments, I must be honest and say I take the Updates as Gospel and have not thought of them ever being wrong and I don't take the Star so would not notice anything different.

In the Blackbird case the updates would appear to be right as I saw most of his points myself and the Eagles Website and program confirm 42.

As regards Bonus points they have seemingly always been around and when I started in 1948 they were simply paid I suspect to stop riders competing with each other with possible consequences and encourage the team element. I will still have difficulty thinking of them as anything else.

[manchesterpaul 447]

If you're going to use guest bookings you have just binned pretty much the top 10 draft riders from being in the draft.

 

He's never been in a declared EL 1-7

 

Who scb? lol. I don't and Hunters doesn't either. I was thinking of adding in brackets at the end of a row a rider's average inclusive of guest bookings if they have a significant number, but for sporting performance the main listed average will be the rides for their declared team - twenty such riders at any given time.

 

Who's never been declared in an EL 1-7? Lewis Blackbird is officially listed as number 6 for Eastbourne (Jason Garrity 6 for Coventry).

[SCB 0]

 

Who scb? lol. I don't and Hunters doesn't either. I was thinking of adding in brackets at the end of a row a rider's average inclusive of guest bookings if they have a significant number, but for sporting performance the main listed average will be the rides for their declared team - twenty such riders at any given time.

 

Who's never been declared in an EL 1-7? Lewis Blackbird is officially listed as number 6 for Eastbourne (Jason Garrity 6 for Coventry).

Someone asked why Garrity was in the fast track and not Birks so I pointed out because he's never been in the EL before. DaC brought up his first two EL meeting as a guest for BV in 2011 (before he'd even made his PL debut incidentally)

[manchesterpaul 447]

Some interesting comments, I must be honest and say I take the Updates as Gospel and have not thought of them ever being wrong and I don't take the Star so would not notice anything different.

In the Blackbird case the updates would appear to be right as I saw most of his points myself and the Eagles Website and program confirm 42.

As regards Bonus points they have seemingly always been around and when I started in 1948 they were simply paid I suspect to stop riders competing with each other with possible consequences and encourage the team element. I will still have difficulty thinking of them as anything else.

 

Nooooo not by any means are they Gospel. On occasions a riders scores can not match up to the heat scores or sometimes a teams score won't add up to match the individual riders scores etc. I must be clear though no criticism from me as you should see the state of a match programme that i fill in, it ends up looking like an abstract painting with all the lines through it lol.

 

Like i say i'll recheck Blackbird's scores, although i do have a vague memory of when double-checking scores over two different sources Blackbird's info i had to change, i could possibly be wrong but will have look through in a short while.

 

The bonus points were introduced to stop riders racing each other with potential disastrous consequences for the team should it give an opportunity for an opposing rider to pass by or even worse one of the team's riders ending up falling! Just a quickie without diverting the thread on to another topic, out of interest when you say "you will still have difficulty of thinking of them as anything else" do you approve or disapprove of their purpose and agree or disagree that they are needed as an indication of actual sporting performance/capability? I mean when we see a teams top rider, or superior to his team mate in any particular race, holding back in second place we all know he is capable of beating his colleague in front but if he prefers to keep opposing riders at bay and sacrifice a win then surely he should be rewarded with a paid win and also have it reflected in his averages? Each to their own opinion of course but i'm curious as to your opinion.

Someone asked why Garrity was in the fast track and not Birks so I pointed out because he's never been in the EL before. DaC brought up his first two EL meeting as a guest for BV in 2011 (before he'd even made his PL debut incidentally)

 

All understood.

Edited May 3, 2014 by manchesterpaul

[manchesterpaul 447]

'Hunters' as an example of the Blackbird compilations i just had a quick look and spotted these two differences

 

Speedway Star has for the Eastbourne-Belle Vue match on 12th April

Heat 9: Nielsen, Blackbird, Reade, Halsey. (2-4) 32-25...59.4

Speedway Updates has

Heat 09: Nielsen, Halsey, Reade, Blackbird. (2-4)...32-25...59.4

Speedway Star has for the Swindon-Eastbourne match on the 24th April

L.Blackbird 3 2* 3 1* 2*

Speedway Updates

L.Blackbird 3 2* 3 1 2*

Both have heat 10 as Heat 12: North, Lahti, Blackbird, Worrall 3-3 35-37 66.83

So in this instance you can see that Updates have not credited the bonus point to Blackbird despite having him finish directly behind his team mate.

Like i say i'm obviously going to lean towards the 'professional' source of Speedway Star, especially in view of lots of mistakes on Updates, however that's not to say the Speedway Star is correct in the instance of the Blackbird second or fourth race. I don't know who's right in that case - but overall from experience the Star is usually clearly the more accurate of the two with their results matching other sources and noting Update mistakes made and others pointing them out too. Don't forget when cross-checking conflicting results that several sources take their data from Speedway Updates they are merely copying the erroneous results.

Anyways like i say the odd point here or there won't distort the rider's average that much at all so i think we can still go back to the discussion of how riders are doing and be confident we are pretty much on the same page. No point in getting concerned with slight discrepancies at all.

[AndyP 3]

Our SpeedwayGB website is this season publishing the official referee scorecards as they are sent to us either direct from the referees or the BSPA.

 

They can be accessed via the daily news reviews on the homepage and also the monthly fixtures/results pages, e.g. http://www.speedwaygb.co/april14.html

 

The match in question can be found here: http://www.speedwaygb.co/14results/east_04-12-2014_pro.pdf

 

The referee scorecards are about as accurate and official as you can get and are what all the official averages and scores are taken from. On the rare occasions there is an incorrect entry with them an amendment will be issued.

 

[manchesterpaul 447]

Our SpeedwayGB website is this season publishing the official referee scorecards as they are sent to us either direct from the referees or the BSPA.

 

They can be accessed via the daily news reviews on the homepage and also the monthly fixtures/results pages, e.g. http://www.speedwaygb.co/april14.html

 

The match in question can be found here: http://www.speedwaygb.co/14results/east_04-12-2014_pro.pdf

 

The referee scorecards are about as accurate and official as you can get and are what all the official averages and scores are taken from. On the rare occasions there is an incorrect entry with them an amendment will be issued.

 

 

Cool i'll use them, now all that remains is who's going to tell Speedway Star they dropped a proverbial

 

Will your site be adding the fast track riders averages to the team lists?, it seems strange that the races they are involved in are being treated as not having taken place for them, yet the other riders in the race who aren't fast track have the race included in their averages! Or are you ignoring any race with a FT rider in, which i doubt. It's a bit of a mess the way it stands. The race either counts or it doesn't, it shouldn't count for some and not others in a race. It seems silly to make the data for FT riders not for public consumption! by publishing team averages with their averages excluded.

 

Incidentally, your site has come on in leaps and bounds over the last few years, and especially again this year with some great information being made available to fans. I won't go into some other major big plusses and two negatives as it's not the topic of the thread, but yeah it's getting better all the time, excellent work.

Edited May 3, 2014 by manchesterpaul

[ghcooke 86]

Fascinated by ManchesterPaul's stats. Have been thinking about this quite a lot so took his stats and then produced a table showing the averages combined for all the pairs of reserves and then compared that to the positions of each team in the League (as of Saturday morning's SCB table)

 

The figure in brackets shows the position of the team in the Elite League at time of writing!

1). Kings Lynn 14.33 (2)

2). Eastbourne 13.06 (4)

3). Coventry 12.02 (6)

4). Lakeside 11.94 (1)

5). Poole 11.35 (3)

6). Wolverhampton 10.95 (5)

7). Birmingham 9.10 (10)

8). Swindon 8.80 (9)

9). Belle Vue 8.71 (7)

10). Leicester 8.45 (8)

So, whilst the top 5 places are filled by teams in the top 6 for reserve averages, the bottom 4 in the Elite League are also the four teams with the lowest averaging reserves.

I know that there are "Statistics, Statistics and damned statistics" but it does seem clear that the way to success is via strong reserves.

 

One other area, and I apologise if this has been covered elsewhere, is the impact the development has upon those riding at 2 and 4. If they do badly then they'll probably get the chop anyway, but if they do well then their average will be grotesquely inflated and they'll be out of a job next year. Over the years there have been quite a few riders who have worked so hard in one year that they've become unemployable in the following - this year I suspect that quite a few more will fall into this trap.

Edited May 4, 2014 by ghcooke

[Trees 2,814]

[quote name="ghcooke" post="2441720"

One other area, and I apologise if this has been covered elsewhere, is the impact the development has upon those riding at 2 and 4. If they do badly then they'll probably get the chop anyway, but if they do well then their average will be grotesquely inflated and they'll be out of a job next year. Over the years there have been quite a few riders who have worked so hard in one year that they've become unemployable in the following - this year I suspect that quite a few more will fall into this trap.

Don't you think that the BSPA will downgrade their averages appropriately, I do, it wouldn't be right not to!

[Skidder1 7,632]

Don't you think that the BSPA will downgrade their averages appropriately, I do, it wouldn't be right not to!

Just increase the team building limit to a sensible figure!!

[MattK 3,447]

Don't you think that the BSPA will downgrade their averages appropriately, I do, it wouldn't be right not to!

 

You really want the BSPA "re-assessing" riders averages at the end of the season. Lordy!