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Rob Godfrey interview in Speedway Star

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NOT saying whether I agree or disagree with Rob's comments and am certainly not generally a fan of decisions made by the BSPA, but ... without people like Rob, funding speedway tracks that for the most part are not even profitable, there would be no speedway. And with regards to Scunthorpe... he created one of the best tracks in the country and if racing was good elsewhere the sport might not have some of the problems it does today. Just saying ...

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1 hour ago, tmc said:

I'll have to read the piece in full later today before commenting but his throwaway line (used as a pull quote) along the lines of today's racing being much better than it was in the 60s, 70s & 80s certainly raised an eyebrow here. He obviously never saw PC - to name just one - in his prime.

The best racing I've seen on a week-to-week basis is at modern day Scunthorpe, so I understand Rob Godfrey's statement.

If I'd have been privileged to watch racing on a weekly basis at Hyde Road in the 70s, maybe I'd disagree.

To be honest, I don't think the racing is any better or any worse.  The big difference is the atmosphere during meetings - that's not the same.  And that's down to crowds being a fraction of what they were. 

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39 minutes ago, PHILIPRISING said:

NOT saying whether I agree or disagree with Rob's comments and am certainly not generally a fan of decisions made by the BSPA, but ... without people like Rob, funding speedway tracks that for the most part are not even profitable, there would be no speedway. And with regards to Scunthorpe... he created one of the best tracks in the country and if racing was good elsewhere the sport might not have some of the problems it does today. Just saying ...

Individuals funding loss making clubs is why the sport is now in terminal decline. Speedway (currently) is a professional sport but mainly run by rank amateurs or enthusiasts with very little intelligence or business acumen. Godfrey and Chapman are living proof....and they and others are to blame and why the sport is bust.

 The stadium is a dump, the track is sort of okay but it’s hardly an oval, it’s a circle, throttle on blast round no technical ability required.  Boring. Just saying. 

Edited by Speedtiger
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THERE isn't exactly a queue of people lining up take the places of the "rank amateurs and enthusiasts" and even if there was who would pay them? I seriously doubt that any promoter in the country would not seriously consider selling if a suitable offer came along. Bit it ain't going to happen. Not even the most successful track in the country (Poole) can attract a buyer.

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21 hours ago, HGould said:

I found it completely depressing. The boss of the CL and yet he can't in 5 pages mention my team Birmingham - Britain's 2nd city Club moving up and does not warrant a mention. He can't be bothered to talk positively or even mention 2 x KOC winners in 2018 from other Leagues moving in to the CL - Somerset down but adding to the quality and Eastbourne up, a Club with a very recent Elite league tradition.

Does he actually see the CL as a "Northern League"??. 

I'm sad Workington and Lakeside won't be lining up, but he can't be bothered to talk much about those Clubs who will enhance the Championship! his comments about protecting Friday nights for his own Club by stopping Lakeside race on a Friday are as much to blame for their and Workingtons Fixture backlog as any amount of rain and bad Fixture planning. Time he took some responsibility for that.

I get that all Clubs have to tighten their pockets and that does not make great news but overall it was typical Godfrey - ego ego ego.

I just wish the guys at Glasgow and Edinburgh and other successful Promotions could join this "top table" or is it just a closed Club. 

Snide comments too about some Clubs seeking a lower limit to survive.

 

 

 

http://www.speedwaygb.co.uk/directoryofmembers

Harkess...................Edinburgh

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Louis.......................Ipswich & an ex rider

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40 minutes ago, Speedtiger said:

Individuals funding loss making clubs is why the sport is now in terminal decline. Speedway (currently) is a professional sport but mainly run by rank amateurs or enthusiasts with very little intelligence or business acumen. Godfrey and Chapman are living proof....and they and others are to blame and why the sport is bust.

 The stadium is a dump, the track is sort of okay but it’s hardly an oval, it’s a circle, throttle on blast round no technical ability required.  Boring. Just saying. 

Started from scratch in 2005 & fixtures/buildings added when financially possible. Not a greyhound stadium leased for speedway & not council owned with millions thrown at it.

Sheffield & Belle Vue, both your tracks, although slightly different, are "throttle on blast round" as you conveniently say.

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If the future of the sport is in the hands of Godfrey and Chapman we might as well shut up shop now . Godfrey behaviour last season was beyond the pale. As  50+ year follwer of the sport since knee high to a grasshopper, I now find motivation to see another meeting ver difficult, and it’s almost entirely due to Godfreys machinations last year. The sport can’t afford to lose a single fan yet Godfrey has just turned thousands away. The man is a complete and utter plonker. As one promoter said to me last season, the way things are going we will finish up with the same two teams facing each other eeek after week, nothing else left. 

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2 hours ago, tmc said:

I'll have to read the piece in full later today before commenting but his throwaway line (used as a pull quote) along the lines of today's racing being much better than it was in the 60s, 70s & 80s certainly raised an eyebrow here. He obviously never saw PC - to name just one - in his prime.

While you can agree or disagree with his assessment with the standard of the racing,Imo the problem is the sport cannot be taken seriously as professional with regards to the rules and regulation brought in for “best interest of the sport “ and the interpretation and manipulation of the rules to suit the situations as the problems arise.Fixtures and averages  are an example.

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1 hour ago, PHILIPRISING said:

NOT saying whether I agree or disagree with Rob's comments and am certainly not generally a fan of decisions made by the BSPA, but ... without people like Rob, funding speedway tracks that for the most part are not even profitable, there would be no speedway. And with regards to Scunthorpe... he created one of the best tracks in the country and if racing was good elsewhere the sport might not have some of the problems it does today. Just saying ...

Pretty much agree with this.  I don't agree with his assessment that racing is better than ever. It might be at Scunthorpe, Belle Vue and Somerset but unfortunately that is not enough to prop up the sport  in this country.  Fans have got eyes, so have those who watch the TV coverage on BT sport. As much as they bull it up how many classics have you seen from Swindon, Leicester, Wolves, Poole, Kings Lynn recently.

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17 hours ago, Suffolkpunch said:

In this article he mentioned if an away team won it was not good news for the promoter of that winning club because of having to pay his riders too much money the same as a big home win. Not sure how but maybe it is time for a different pay structure for riders is introduced,and not paid per point maybe clubs would not loose as much money each year hence not go out of business.

Speedway must be one of the only sports that pays solely on performance only, perhaps this is one reason why this great sport is not going forward.    

There wouldn't be this problem if the staging promotion paid both teams, at standard rates, a maximum of 105 points per league match

Would be a help in budgetting, knowing virtually exactly what outgoings would be in terms of rider payments

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1 hour ago, Speedtiger said:

Individuals funding loss making clubs is why the sport is now in terminal decline. Speedway (currently) is a professional sport but mainly run by rank amateurs or enthusiasts with very little intelligence or business acumen. Godfrey and Chapman are living proof....and they and others are to blame and why the sport is bust.

 The stadium is a dump, the track is sort of okay but it’s hardly an oval, it’s a circle, throttle on blast round no technical ability required.  Boring. Just saying. 

If you care to read the comments posted by your fellow Tiger fans from last year as your team powered almost unopposed to the wooden spoon, 99.9% were less than complementary about the state of the track. 

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1 hour ago, PHILIPRISING said:

THERE isn't exactly a queue of people lining up take the places of the "rank amateurs and enthusiasts" and even if there was who would pay them? I seriously doubt that any promoter in the country would not seriously consider selling if a suitable offer came along. Bit it ain't going to happen. Not even the most successful track in the country (Poole) can attract a buyer.

...and that is my point. The sport has been run onto the ground by incompetent fools, who think they know best, to such a point that no one in their right minds would currently want to invest in speedway...either to own or even sponsor a club. This season will be just like the passed few and see the sport quickly slipping further into decline and more clubs going bust. As the SS financial fortunes are closely aligned to the sport I would have thought your journalists would have been asking some serious and pertinent questions of Godfrey and Chapman. I can only imagine the amount of worry and frustration You and the Staff at the SS have to see the sport in this perilous state.

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The five-page interview with Rob Godfrey in this week's Speedway Star certainly provides food for thought. Firstly, we can only take what we see quoted at face value and perhaps he said more which couldn't be included for space reasons. Benefit of the doubt.

While I don't profess to know his background or what he does or doesn't do for the sport today, I've never spoken to the man, there are a number of points raised that I'd like to respond to and are worthy of further critical analysis (sorry to waffle on and hope you stay awake till the end!:

SEMI-PRO OR AMATEUR?

Rob alludes to, if not quite advocates, the idea of British speedway becoming semi-pro in the future, which (as I suggested in another recent BSF thread) it needs to do NOW in the short-term if it is to survive with any credibility left. He effectively spells it out just why this is the case when referring to the recent demise of Championship treble winners Workington. And the nail is well and truly smashed on the head in a separate, much smaller, item in the same issue of the Star in which Workington promoter Laura Morgan reveals that running the second tier club has cost her around £750,000 in total and that another injection of £75,000 would be required simply to run this year, when Comets would surely expect to incur at least the same loss, if not more given how hard it would be to repeat their 2018 triple.

Later in the piece, Rob cites his own Josh Auty as one rider who "seems to make it pay" competing only in one league. If Auty can, who don't many others? As long as promoters keep paying them collectively more than what turnstiles and sponsorship income, they will continue to spend (waste?) money on expensive machinery, engine tuning, mechanics and fancy transport. Only the promoters can stop this happening.

FULL-TIME PROMOTERS

The question of professional promoters is a double-edged sword. Rob says that of the modern day regime, "not one of us needs to do it". Therein lies one problem: rightly or wrongly, they are not running their clubs on a full-time, 24/7 basis and don't depend on the sport for a living - unlike the likes of Fearman, Ochiltree, Silver, Dunton, Wilson, Thomas, Mawdsley, etc in days gone by. It was their livelihood - yes, of course, there were less counter-attractions competing for fans' money and -  but they still had to work hard for it.

For many (if not all) of today's ilk, speedway is a hobby they can indulge (for a while at least) to feed their egos. Unfortunately, the sport in Britain has been denigrated so much over the years that there is no turning back.

COUNTING THE COST

Rob reveals that winning the league (Div 2) in 2012 cost Scunthorpe 30 grand, suggesting Sheffield probably paid a similar price in their pursuit of honours. Later, he gives Glasgow as a prime example of a club that has the slickest PR machine in the country . . . yet still cannot attract sufficient crowds to meet their running costs.

This, in itself, tells you all you need to know about promoters over-paying riders. The sums just don't add up. Yes, of course, riders deserve to be paid handsomely for the risks they take. But no business will survive, long-term, if it continues to ignore the basic rules of life: don't pay out more than you can afford.

COMPARING THE PAST

As for Rob's line about speedway today being "far, far better than it ever was", provocatively reproduced on the Star's front cover, I reckon thousands of our customers at Retro Speedway would vehemently disagree! To be fair, Rob is duty bound to promote his club and modern speedway in general, and in doing tries to discredit the past and (to paraphrase Harold Macmillan) convince his punters that "you've never had it so good". So we must assume that he never had the privilege of enjoying the likes of great entertainers such as Peter Collins, Chris Morton, the Morans, Bruce Penhall, Michael Lee, Ole Olsen, Jan O. Pedersen, Simon Cross, Malcolm Simmons, Mark Loram (started in 1987) . . . the list really is endless and I've not even mentioned the innumerable BL2/National League favourites who thrilled the crowds week in, week out.

If he was talking about the Grand Prix, compared to the old and long-winded World Championship qualifying system, I'd be inclined to agree. The GPs routinely serve up tremendous entertainment and invariably top quality racing, where riders of equal ability are well matched.

But comparing the GPs with the Elite League matches I've seen on telly is more often than not chalk and cheese. Riders strung out by half-a-lap isn't entertainment, nor any sort of advert for domestic speedway.

From what we read, the point Rob doesn't seem to grasp here is that the days of a reserve or middle order man popping out of the gate and holding a world class rider at bay for all four laps are long gone and now rarer than a truthful MP. Speed, and the riders' unquenchable thirst for it, has helped kill the sport as a spectacle, although here the promoters of the mid-70s must shoulder a lot of blame for failing to nip the four-valve revolution in the bud before it sent costs spiralling out of control and that's where we are today.

PROMOTING - HIGHLIGHTS PACKAGE

I was encouraged to read of the BSPA's plans for a revamped website with hopes to include free-to-air matches. In the same issue I read that Poland will be airing a magazine-style show every Monday.

So it begs the question: why haven't the BSPA done a deal with Go-Speed and all the individual DVD filming companies covering the tracks to put together, say, a weekly 30-minute show showcasing the past week's highlights, complemented by interviews with promoters and riders on current topics and burning issues? Would not a sufficient number of fans not be prepared to pay a nominal 50p or £1 per week throughout the season to cover production costs? The show could be offered as a download from the BSPA site with the same show being uploaded to YouTube a week later (if it hit YT at the same time, there would obviously be no point in paying the small sub). For obvious reasons, these edited highlights would not include any from 'live' BT Sport matches. British speedway desperately needs to harness its relationship with BT Sport if it is to have any hope of attracting a national sponsor, or backers for each of the three divisions (alas, Rob did not mention this failure on the BSPA's part).

The BSPA already has the ideal experienced and knowledgeable anchor man/presenter on its pay roll in Nigel Pearson, while two or three of the best people producing DVDs could be tasked to edit the best action clips and interviews.

Reality is, though, a weekly highlights download via the BSPA site or uploaded to YouTube probably won't attract one new supporters, especially a youngster who can't take his or her eyes off their smart phone for more than a few seconds. This will sound crazy to some, but promoters' priority should be to do all they can to KEEP their existing supporter base and TRY to win back those who have been disenfranchised over the part 10 years. Forget chasing new, young fans . . . speedway just doesn't cut it with them and very probably never will again. So forget them for now and focus all energies on keeping what you have and winning back the old faithful with fresh ideas, well prepared tracks and a professionally run sport.

Only last week we at Retro Speedway were delighted to take on five new subscribers to our bi-monthly Backtrack magazine. OK, five in a matter of days is really nothing. But not in the context of where British speedway is now it isn't. They are five people who enjoyed reliving past memories but are now engaging with the sport again. Facebook is the biggest factor in this: whether you personally log on to FB or not and regardless of your personal preferences (FB, forum or Twitter), more and more of the older generation are signing up to Facebook's social media platform to 'chat' to kindred spirits - and that is where the BSPA should be looking to re-recruit former fans who might be tempted back into stadiums. This is where they will find their target audience.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Rob again uses Glasgow as his best example of a club that does social media very well. But he is wrong to excuse others clubs for not emulating them, or even going close to doing so, by using costs as an excuse. Having a good mate who runs a successful non-league football club, I can confirm that a good promo video was produced for them for as little as £750 . . . or, to put it another way, the equivalent of what some riders in UK speedway earn in one night.

Running  good Twitter and Facebook platforms is very inexpensive - all that's needed are the right people to manage and execute it to an acceptably professional standard and who have the imagination to offer what supporters should expect from these services.

DOUBLING-UP, GUESTS AND RACE FORMAT

While Rob was of course asked about how the rampant use of guests and doubling-up does untold harm to the sport's image, he dismisses very lightly the suggestion that the problems would be eased by cutting team numbers from seven to six and adopting a new heat formula (six-man teams have been used in the past). Am I missing something here? British speedway doesn't have enough riders of a certain minimum standard to staff its three leagues, and yet the hierarchy blindly sticks with seven-man teams even though virtually every club in the land is inevitably soon forced into calling up guests and doubling-up riders. Rob admits: "We don't have a big enough crop of riders without doubling-up, which is what causes all the problems".

We know what the problems are, Rob. What we desperately need from people like you who govern and run the sport are solutions and ideas. Six-man teams (even in the short-term, until the young Brits coming up are up to scratch in a few years' time) won't eradicate the needs for guests, R/R and doubling-up but surely it's a no-brainer as at least a starting point . . . or please tell me why it isn't?

What disillusions me more than anything when I read comments from promoters in the wake of another BSPA AGM is the chronic lack of ideas and innovation. I mean, why aren't one or two competitions run on slightly different formats and rules? Where's the variety - if not in terms of team numbers, then at least in competition formats? Even the rightly much-maligned England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had the gumption to realise that fans needed more than a staple diet of four-day Championship games and the sport has generally reaped the benefit of introducing two DIFFERENT limited-overs formats, the 50-over one-day league and T20 knockout comp, which are replicated in all major cricketing countries.

I'd like to see a promoter come up with something a bit radical and off the wall. Put on a 16 or 20-heat meeting that embraces different sections: team racing and individual events; perhaps throw in a couple of match-races (Golden Helmet & Silver Helmet - remember them?); a few handicap races where the top riders start off the back grid; a 4-heat 250cc juniors event; maybe even a ladies' race (look how much national publicity is afforded to women's football and cricket at domestic and international level ). Indeed, why not run the KO Cup along these lines for a season on an experimental basis? Supporters might actually look forward to attending, because it's DIFFERENT.

But with British speedway, it's the tired, predictable same old, same old. Lots of ongoing, familiar problems, very few solutions.

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4 hours ago, PHILIPRISING said:

NOT saying whether I agree or disagree with Rob's comments and am certainly not generally a fan of decisions made by the BSPA, but ... without people like Rob, funding speedway tracks that for the most part are not even profitable, there would be no speedway. And with regards to Scunthorpe... he created one of the best tracks in the country and if racing was good elsewhere the sport might not have some of the problems it does today. Just saying ...

It’s interesting that we get continued comments that the racing at Scunthorpe is brilliant, yet every time I have been their is only a couple of hundred watching, and that includes a healthy few from my club.

Over the last few years I must have been a dozen times or more but the crowd is always the same, clearly not everyone feels the same otherwise the place would be rammed most weeks.

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9 minutes ago, bigcatdiary said:

It’s interesting that we get continued comments that the racing at Scunthorpe is brilliant, yet every time I have been their is only a couple of hundred watching, and that includes a healthy few from my club.

Over the last few years I must have been a dozen times or more but the crowd is always the same, clearly not everyone feels the same otherwise the place would be rammed most weeks.

WHAT did you think of the racing?

 

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