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Sheffield VS Newcastle Diamonds, SGBCL, THU 16/08/18 @ 7:30pm

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On 8/20/2018 at 1:45 PM, thommo34 said:

Totally agree with 4thbender, I find it very difficult to understand how most promoters, as successful business men, seem to know so little about running speedway as a business. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but if Mr Lomas is to be believed, some of  the Sheffield promotion team cannot accept criticism.

Without doubt there have been some serious mistakes made this year, the most serious being the belief that Josh Bates would only be out for a few weeks. Family loyalty has little place in business and most of the Sheffield crowd could see at the start of the season that Josh was carrying a very serious injury that would take months, not weeks, to clear.

I also fail to see how any Team Manager could seemingly not understand that the 3 and 4 pairing was extremely weak and would leak points, giving the opposition big advantages in at least 3 heats. Although I rate Broc I think it is extremely unfair to give him the pressure of Heat 14. In my opinion he has had a rough deal - why not swap Todd and Broc round in the team?

I have not seen any offensive abuse on this forum, in most cases it is simply constructive criticism. After such a successful season last year we are all extremely disappointed. 

Just as a point of order, there are female as well as male speedway promoters in British speedway.

But how do you know that these men and women know so little about running speedway as a business? To help me understand your claim you're going to have to post some examples of this to show how they know so little. Presumably you can do this, right?

"Most of the Sheffield crowd could see at the start of the season that Josh was carrying a very serious injury." Is this another fact? If it is then I'm obviously one of the small number of Sheffield fans who don't have a suitable medical qualification and who didn't have access to Josh's medical records.

I simply based my opinion on the fact that Josh had been back in training and that the medical advice was initially that he wouldn't miss that much of the season. If most of the Sheffield crowd knew this wasn't the case why didn't they inform the promoters or management? Presumably you did though?

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On 8/20/2018 at 5:45 PM, StevePark said:

But you are totally over-looking the fact that two of three Sheffield riders you name are on assessed averages.  So to compare the averages is erroneous at best.  Also, how long have said Sheffield riders been riding, compared to the three Diamonds riders you name?  As far as I can see, the Promotion aren't hiding anything.  Kyle Howarth has publicly stated that riders are being paid, so that conspiracy theory is blown completely out of the water.  Teams/riders go through bad patches.  Why do some fans look for an undercurrent, which 999 times out of 1000 isn't there?  

This.

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11 hours ago, RobHowe said:

“The article in question was published in the matchday programme, which is a Sheffield Speedway publication. Although it comes with the usual disclaimers, it would be hard to dispute the fact that it expresses the bona fide views of the promotion.”

It’s actually very easy to dispute this, as I’ve already done. It is your opinion that the views of the author in question represent those of the Sheffield promotion. Your claim is merely that. An opinion. You have provided no facts to support your statement.

You also conveniently failed to answer a single question that I posed in my original response to your post. So, I’ll ask the first and most pertinent one again just in case you are able to answer it.

 

You claimed that “The Sheffield promotion has taken the usual disgusting step of blaming the paying patrons for the team's current demise." I asked why it was the "usual disgusting step" in your opinion? I also asked when had they done this before? I asked if you could provide examples please as I've not seen any?

So far you’ve failed to back that statement up – so if you can support this claim and you have it, then why not simply put up the evidence if it is, as you claim, the “usual step”?

If you don’t or just can’t, are you not just as guilty of being “plain insulting” and should you not “withdraw the comment at once and apologise”? Surely you wouldn’t expect different rules and standards to apply to you? Would you?

 

You then went on to refer to Sheffield Speedway as a “failing organisation” that was attempting “to deflect attention from its failure by blaming the "media."

Firstly, I presume you have financial evidence of Sheffield Speedway being a “failing organisation”? Otherwise there’s no way you would have made such a bold and potentially defamatory remark is there? Perhaps you could share this information to back up your claim?

You also claim that Sheffield Speedway is blaming the media. Now correct me if I’m wrong here but I didn’t see “blame” directed at any part of the media – whether it be locally or nationally.

But then again you typed “media”. So surely you weren’t referring to yourself and the other true aficionados of shale as the media? Were you? If you weren’t, then who were you referring to as the “media” that Sheffield Speedway was apparently blaming to deflect attention away from the fact that it is a “failing organisation”?

Despite the fact you seemingly don’t see an issue with what you post. You made reference to the author “calling us "clowns" and "abusers" and intimating that we don't know what we're talking about.” How do you know the article referred to you? Somewhat presumptuous don’t you think? Or maybe you have a guilty conscience?

 

You claim, “as a commercial provider of sporting entertainment, the promotion's responsibility is to provide competitive sport which entertains.” I’d question the word “responsibility”, as I personally think it’s merely in their interest to provide competitive and entertaining sport. But I think you’d have trouble finding anyone, bar perhaps the person who stares back at you in your bathroom mirror, who wasn’t thoroughly and royally entertained last season. And I think if people were honest they’d say the same for the majority of the first half of this season too. The promotion re-signed / signed some exciting riders last winter, and whilst we were never going to be as strong as we ended last season, the team looked promising and competitive.

Obviously over the past few weeks this has not been the case. And whilst I don’t doubt that you are disappointed, we all are, I’ll wager that the promotion are equally if not more disappointed. But that is all it has really been. A few weeks. A short spell of bad results. Nothing more. And whilst you claim not to be a conspiracy theorist, you appear to believe that something fundamental is wrong inside the club.

You talk as though the promotion have deliberately gone out of their way to make the team uncompetitive and not entertaining over the past 4 weeks. Do you truly believe this is what they’ve done? Do you truly believe that any sports team would do this? Or are you merely just overreacting to a run of disappointing results?

Watching professional sport is expensive. Sadly, not everyone can afford to do so. I’m sure most sports teams – perhaps with the exception of Premier League football teams – would charge their fans less if they could afford to do so. But the harsh reality is putting a professional sports team on the track, ice, pitch, court, etc costs money. And those costs are only going to go one way. I actually think £16 for speedway is very competitive. I rarely get change from £40 for a match ticket at Hillsborough, going to the Steelers would cost me circa £18 for a ticket and I'd probably have to sell a kidney to fly out to Pittsburgh and get a decent ticket to watch the Pens. So for me speedway is good value.

In fact if I thought about how much I’d spent watching speedway, football, ice hockey and basketball over my lifetime I’d probably give myself an aneurysm.

But that has always been my choice. I’m fortunate that I can afford to watch professional sport, but I know when I hand my money over that there are no guarantees. Ever. If I wanted to watch my team win every week I wouldn’t have picked the Tigers, Wednesday and the Pittsburgh Penguins as ‘my’ teams. Ok, so granted the Pens have had some good years of late, but when I first started following them they were horrible to watch. But they are MY teams. Win, lose or draw – they are MY teams. If they lose am I disappointed? Of course. Do I throw the towel in? Never.

“….What we've witnessed in the past four weeks is not competitive sport…..it's demeaning and humiliating….” Demeaning and humiliating?! If you’re truly serious about this I’d suggest you give speedway and possibly sport a miss for a bit. As disappointing and frustrating as the past few weeks have been, sport shouldn’t leave you humiliated and demeaned. If a few defeats leave you like this I’d move on. Life is too short to let it make you feel like this.

I'm puzzled as to whether to perceive you as a gifted amateur psycho-analyst or a proficient barrack-room lawyer. Either way, I sense the truest perception has you down as a glove-puppet with the hand of the BSPA up you. So from now on I'll call you Patsy, the Promoters' Performing Puppet, going around like a deranged Mr. Punch, bonking everyone on the head with your policeman's truncheon if they dare to speak a word of dissent.

Later on when I’ve got a bit more time I’m planning on having a serious go at the promoters’ unhinged idea that the answer to speedway’s ills is to ration its exposure to the paying public. I may put a few noses out of joint – best be ready with your truncheon!

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3 hours ago, 4thbender said:

I'm puzzled as to whether to perceive you as a gifted amateur psycho-analyst or a proficient barrack-room lawyer. Either way, I sense the truest perception has you down as a glove-puppet with the hand of the BSPA up you. So from now on I'll call you Patsy, the Promoters' Performing Puppet, going around like a deranged Mr. Punch, bonking everyone on the head with your policeman's truncheon if they dare to speak a word of dissent.

Later on when I’ve got a bit more time I’m planning on having a serious go at the promoters’ unhinged idea that the answer to speedway’s ills is to ration its exposure to the paying public. I may put a few noses out of joint – best be ready with your truncheon!

 

Why don't you have a 'serious go' at our promoters tonight, in person, they'll all be there.

Edited by victor meldrew
Text added

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2 hours ago, victor meldrew said:

Why don't you have a 'serious go' at our promoters tonight, in person, they'll all be there.

Only the Sheffield and Edinburgh ones. I suspect the idiotic solution was none of their doing.

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