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Lakeside Hammers vs Ipswich Witches 13/4/18

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54 minutes ago, 2ndbendbeerhut said:

Was that normal for the quality of racing at Lakeside ? 

No it’s usually better when the weather is better but with the amount of rain we’ve had, all the track curator can really do is get the track packed down hard so at least it didnt fall foul of the weather like so many others. The trouble is when it is packed down you pay the price with less grip.

PersonallyI thought it was a better meeting last week but Awesome Lawson was, well, awesome. His sweep round the outside of bends 1&2 off gate 4 in heat 13 was quite exceptional, especially against a rider of Danny Kings quality. Gate 4 has a slight adverse camber and hardly anyone wins off of it in the big heats. 

Ippo’s problem was they had two riders who had never ridden the track before and just couldn’t get on with it.

Good call by the ref in heat 8. There is no automatic right to all four back. One rider fell off on his own. The other hit the air fence and was not under power when the race was stopped.

Edited by Daytripper
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Also forgot to mention the sound system was much clearer last night, and having Andy back on the mic was good too, no disrespect meant to the other guy who is new and will take time to grow into the part, Andy just adds a little something to proceedings, he sounds confident and tries to get the crowd involved.

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8 hours ago, Daytripper said:

Good call by the ref in heat 8. There is no automatic right to all four back. One rider fell off on his own. The other hit the air fence and was not under power when the race was stopped.

There’s not an automatic right to all four back no - but standing on the second bend it was clear to see all four made a good start together it got nipped up and Bowtell from gate two made clear contact with haertel and haertel with Morley on the outside - both continued on trying to save it and subsequently fell of on their own but it was a clear case of first bend bunching and the ref denied the paying public of a speedway race with all four riders back in!

Wouldn’t have made much difference to be result but just seemed a very harsh decision on the two young lads racing hard for the first corner!

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49 minutes ago, 89buttons said:

There’s not an automatic right to all four back no - but standing on the second bend it was clear to see all four made a good start together it got nipped up and Bowtell from gate two made clear contact with haertel and haertel with Morley on the outside - both continued on trying to save it and subsequently fell of on their own but it was a clear case of first bend bunching and the ref denied the paying public of a speedway race with all four riders back in!

Wouldn’t have made much difference to be result but just seemed a very harsh decision on the two young lads racing hard for the first corner!

That’s exactly how I saw it aswell.

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It's been a fair few years since I last visited Arena, and it's exactly how I remember it, apart from the smaller crowd. 

Edited by Kitykat

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Bonus from tonight was a more controlled performance from Alfie Bowtell ,,the lad has top class gating ability and.with improved confidence from  last night could be the turning point for him.. after previous performances where he did not look ready for this level of racing......Heat 8 was an appalling decision by another useless ref,, one of the most obvious first bend bunching situations i have ever seen  ..the standard of refereeing is at a low ebb in speedway.,.Thought the crowd was decent  and the meeting had its moments ,Lawson and Ellis were outstanding,,,,but riders giving it a real go on a wide line are still not getting enough help from the track .,,more dirt is needed .The Hammers look a solid unit and i think we can expect a decent season home and away.....

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Crowd looked ok to me with people being spread out on the two straights, what is a good attendance for this level of speedway? Didn’t look that much difference to when we was in the elite league 

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I have my second division specs on but I think we can match if not beat Elite crowds with good results and racing.

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I agree with the comments about heat 8.  Quite clearly the ref' got it wrong...sadly as they so often do.  But this was a good

performance by our team and looks good for the season.  Just hope we steer clear of injuries.  I think Bowtell will prove to be

an ace in the hole and I have high hopes for this young man who I first saw in a training school at Rye House.  Was impressed

then, and nothing has changed.

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Wow, is that really classed as a good decent crowd?  And I dare not mention what I thought of the racing, even the sweet shop was closed before I got there on the way out, which is when I wanted some for journey home. 

 

Lakeside have a very handy team, and Ellis was in a different class to anything ipswich had to offer. 

Edited by Baldyman

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The problem at Lakeside is that the spectators spread themselves out so much that even a decent crowd can look scanty. Certainly, compared to last season, it was a bumper crowd. The crunch will come when we have decent weather which always, at Lakeside at least, puts a lot on the gate.

Edited by TonyE
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It's hard to say. What one club may call a good crowd maybe another would call not so good, I guess it depends what a clubs average crowd is.   I would imagine a few clubs have double what others get.

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Lakeside's average crowd is probably a fair bit lower than it was 5or 6 years ago, but that is symptomatic of many clubs, these days. I put that down mainly to the disastrous way the sport has been mismanaged in recent years. I see the rule that stopped riders from getting off the bike to prepare the start has been dropped already, barely a month into th e season, the latest example of how Chapman & Co stagger from one crazy idea to the next.

Ipswich are fortunate in that they are apparently one of the very few clubs whose attendances have gone against the trend, but many others were in dire financial crisis at the end of last season. 

One thing that hasn't been mentioned on the thread was timing. Parade was at 8.pm, first race a little before 8.15, last race finished 1hr 20 min later, so credit to the ref for keeping it moving, as last weeks ref did well, so credit where it's due.

I think a lot of Lakeside's supporters stopped going and maybe got out of the speedway habit as a result of last years disatrous decision to drop to NL, not that the club had much choice at the time, but some work has to be done now to win the missing fans back.

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Yeah it’s not a huge thing by any means but why advertise parade at 19:45 tapes up at 20:00 and then make no real attempt to keep to that, people are standing around having got there in plenty of time thinking, well is this going to start or not.

as you say there is a real sense of getting meetings through so far with the new rules concerning keeping the action flowing, nothing ruins a meeting more than long breaks in the action.

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I'm not cookies greatest fan, but no one can accuse him of not running a slick meeting. Ok it started a bit late, but there is no interval at arena and swift tractor breaks, which is greatly appreciated by us fans from south of the river.

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