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the comparisons with football are completely bogus. For one thing, a home team mullering the away team every week is fine in football but v boring in speedway.

People keep going on about the product being lower standard but the product is racing not names. As long as the racing is competitive then the product is fine.

In the good times of the 60s and 70s for every Briggs, Mauger, etc there were 2 or 3 journeyman riders making up the numbers. How do you think they achieved regular 11 plus averages?

If Briggs, Mauger, Moore, Fundin, etc met each other once a week their averages would struggle past 9. Mathematical fact

 

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Looking at a vast majority of the issues that are regularly raised (averages, guests, rules, team strengths etc), I feel that Speedway is no longer sustainable as a team sport in the UK. The 'team' aspect causes too many problems.

If you take out the team aspects, you take away a lot of the issues.  Each track could hire, say, 3 local favourites (keeps loyalty) to be involved in individual events, with say 9 other invited riders. This would open up the options for a variety of different concepts to keep things interesting to a new public. Off the top of my head, 1 or 2 lap races, pursuits, time trials, side cars, 125cc, 250's, veterans.

Clubs could invite top stars outside of GP calendar, with no need for the riders to be tied to inconvenient schedules, and have a major event (Golden Hammer type thing). Maybe they could tour 2 or 3 tracks while over, reducing cost?

This would mean that each club could run when it was best for their business, with no need to have a specified number of events each year within the league calendar. 

While you will lose some of the 'old guard' I feel that this would be more likely to make things easier for new supporters to get involved - no meetings over by heat 8 with a team running away as all categories would be building through to its own final.

Probably a bit too radical though for our current promoters to even consider

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12 minutes ago, Jonny the spud said:

It’s funny how some supporters shout that the promoters should spend more money on gp stars, 2 minute clocks, electric scoreboards etc, etc, but moan at the price of entry/ programs. 

 

It's not funny at all, it's perfect sense.

Many fans are tired of paying the same, or increased prices for a product that is being consistently lowered in standard.

No business can expect to survive in that fashion.

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1 hour ago, INCOGNITO said:

It doesn't have to be run by an independent body but one is required to run alongside them to give ideas and feedback before rules and regulations are put forward. 

Isn't that what the SCB are supposed to do?

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16 minutes ago, Jonny the spud said:

It’s funny how some supporters shout that the promoters should spend more money on gp stars, 2 minute clocks, electric scoreboards etc, etc, but moan at the price of entry/ programs. 

 

Youll never please everyone no one no matter what. 

Maybe that’s because they don’t have them but are still expected to pay a higher price for less. Reducing the level of product offering and increase the price is a business model that can only have one outcome. Where we are today. 

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2 hours ago, Chris116 said:

Trouble is that even if you did buy the clubs you would not have a vote for three years and by that time your investment would be worth very little!

If a person bought the most of the major clubs then they could tell the bspa to change the rules, or get the majority of club owners to change them as it was wanting a vote from day one,  or it would set up a new organisation to run speedway, and since it owned and ran the major clubs it would be up to the remaining club owners to join him or carry on without the major clubs.

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1 hour ago, iainb said:

Isn't that what the SCB are supposed to do?

That's more there for licensing, regulatory and disciplinary matters - not for the day-to-day running of the sport.

It's quite reasonable for those with a financial stake in the sport to be determining how it should be run, but that should be determining the structure and the outline principles during the close season..The day-to-day implementation of that should be handled by a neutral commission or commissioner. 

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4 hours ago, DJWolves said:

The figures in speedway are much smaller, but the principles are the same. 

It's actually an entirely different thing.

Many, if not most football clubs live well beyond their means, but there's usually another mug with too much money to replace the previous one when they run out of cash. Even where there isn't, there's literally hundreds of others football clubs clamouring to take the place of fallen.

Speedway is simply not in the same position. It does not attract rich, and especially super-rich mugs, who're willing to endlessly pour money into a loss-making business, nor does command anything like the television or sponsorship monies that formerly equivalent minor sports are able to obtain nowadays. Tracks are not only not clamouring to get into the top league (which says something in itself), but there's just 24 tracks remaining in the entire country - many of which are leading a very marginal existence.

A far better analogy would be ice hockey, which seems to have achieved a relatively stable existence of late, after years of also being a shambolic mess. 

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5 hours ago, iainb said:

We do! £18 every match, sadly if I did have the money to buy a club I wouldn't be able to change anything anyway, the only way to do that would be to buy the majority of clubs

I dare say you would have as much chance as any other promoter has with your survival and growth proposals? 

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49 minutes ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

A far better analogy would be ice hockey, which seems to have achieved a relatively stable existence of late, after years of also being a shambolic mess. 

Here's a thought, how come at least half, probably more, of the British Elite ice hockey teams are staffed by foreign, mostly Canadian or American, journeyman players?

How do they get the visas that are denied to kids like Jaimon Lidsey? 

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22 hours ago, Skidder1 said:

Things can change over the course of the 3 days. What someone says on day 1 can change dramatically by day 3.  Thats why in the past someone has supposedly 'leaked' some detail which then turns out to be inaccurate

I'm all for a well-worded, fully informative press statement at the end of the AGM.

Reminds me of this when one person asked for something agreed to be recorded in the minutes but it was left off so that there was apparently no record of the fact that the point had been agreed at the meeting:

Sir Humphrey Appleby: It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials. And it isn't so it wasn't :D

Having said that, I doubt they minute anything, or it'll be in very feint pencil.

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1 hour ago, Uluru said:

Here's a thought, how come at least half, probably more, of the British Elite ice hockey teams are staffed by foreign, mostly Canadian or American, journeyman players? How do they get the visas that are denied to kids like Jaimon Lidsey

Presumably because those players meet the criteria for being granted UK work visas (which are clearly specified for ice hockey), and Jaimon Lidsey does not.

Maybe ice hockey is better at lobbying UK immigration than speedway, not to mention that speedway abused the rules a few years ago and has probably lost the trust of the authorities. However, the visa rules for speedway have been pretty much the same for years, and are fairly generous towards Australians in terms of allowing the top 4 (maybe top 3 now?) in the National Senior Championship or a state championship to qualify.  

Probably also comes down to the fact that UK population (including many speedway fans on here) wanted to reduce the number of immigrants, speedway contributes little or nothing to the economy or social fabric of the UK, and there's therefore absolutely no reason to give the sport any special treatment. I personally think it's a shame for young Australian riders, but Australia has their rules for Brits wanting to go there too, and it's a reflection of the way our respective wider populations want things to be at this moment in time.

Edited by Humphrey Appleby
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3 hours ago, JC! said:

Looking at a vast majority of the issues that are regularly raised (averages, guests, rules, team strengths etc), I feel that Speedway is no longer sustainable as a team sport in the UK. The 'team' aspect causes too many problems.

If you take out the team aspects, you take away a lot of the issues.  Each track could hire, say, 3 local favourites (keeps loyalty) to be involved in individual events, with say 9 other invited riders. This would open up the options for a variety of different concepts to keep things interesting to a new public. Off the top of my head, 1 or 2 lap races, pursuits, time trials, side cars, 125cc, 250's, veterans.

Clubs could invite top stars outside of GP calendar, with no need for the riders to be tied to inconvenient schedules, and have a major event (Golden Hammer type thing). Maybe they could tour 2 or 3 tracks while over, reducing cost?

This would mean that each club could run when it was best for their business, with no need to have a specified number of events each year within the league calendar. 

While you will lose some of the 'old guard' I feel that this would be more likely to make things easier for new supporters to get involved - no meetings over by heat 8 with a team running away as all categories would be building through to its own final.

Probably a bit too radical though for our current promoters to even consider

Back to the 1920/30's then?

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Looks like the Mafia in lockdown, suspect the new batch of " Made Men" will emerge soon if there has not been a cull before.

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56 minutes ago, Uluru said:

Here's a thought, how come at least half, probably more, of the British Elite ice hockey teams are staffed by foreign, mostly Canadian or American, journeyman players?

How do they get the visas that are denied to kids like Jaimon Lidsey? 

In my youth Speedway and Ice  Hockey were synonymous  . Ice hockey  was always predominantly  Canadian.

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