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Trees

GUEST RIDER BRAINWAVE!!

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Just don't name the guest, call him Stars/Pirates/Robins etc etc Guest Rider, in fact maybe it's the way forward not naming any rider, just referring to them as Stars 1-7 etc etc.   Main thing is to make sure the racing is exciting, imo it's the one major factor for the survival of our sport .... better than it ever has been, how, god knows ....... it's down to the riders and promoters .....

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I genuinely and sincerely don't believe that racing is better than ever and I really don't think that I am peering through rose-tinted spectacles.

Over the last 20 years the percentage of Gate and Go - tapes to flag processions has risen dramatically. Now averaging 12 from 15 heats - if you are lucky, three decent races with passing or the possibility of doing so. In UK racing.

As for Guests being called Stars or whatever, how does that avoid the feeling that Chris Harris ( for example ) pops up Here There and Everywhere while really riding for another supposedly rival team? 

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Injuries etc are part & parcel of speedway. I can't think of anything worse than an uncompetitive meeting when riders are missing, so for me i can't see past having guests to fill in for missing riders.

I would be very interested to see some someone come up with some fair & practical alternatives rather than the usual moaning about the use of guests or 'its up to the promoters/bspa to find a solution'. 

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2 hours ago, flipper11 said:

Injuries etc are part & parcel of speedway. I can't think of anything worse than an uncompetitive meeting when riders are missing, so for me i can't see past having guests to fill in for missing riders.

I would be very interested to see some someone come up with some fair & practical alternatives rather than the usual moaning about the use of guests or 'its up to the promoters/bspa to find a solution'. 

How about the following as a starter..

1 Don't arrange meetings when riders are then needed to be in two places at once..

2. Don't run a rider replacement facility that means your fifth best rider replaces your No1. Just let all rides take seven rides max and the rider below whoever the rider missing is takes three of his rides, whilst the one above him takes one. A Number seven missing means a No8 gets drafted in and the Number six can take three of sevens' rides)..

3. Have less riders per team meaning unattached subs on the bench to bring in..

4. Have less teams at the top two leagues levels, meaning again unattached subs available..

Injuries will always be a part of it, but so much could be done to reduce significantly the amount of guests...

And remember, Sweden and Poland have injuries too as its often the same rider being shared around all three leagues..

But they don't replace him using guests..

Edited by mikebv

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5 hours ago, mikebv said:

How about the following as a starter..

1 Don't arrange meetings when riders are then needed to be in two places at once..

2. Don't run a rider replacement facility that means your fifth best rider replaces your No1. Just let all rides take seven rides max and the rider below whoever the rider missing is takes three of his rides, whilst the one above him takes one. A Number seven missing means a No8 gets drafted in and the Number six can take three of sevens' rides)..

3. Have less riders per team meaning unattached subs on the bench to bring in..

4. Have less teams at the top two leagues levels, meaning again unattached subs available..

Injuries will always be a part of it, but so much could be done to reduce significantly the amount of guests...

And remember, Sweden and Poland have injuries too as its often the same rider being shared around all three leagues..

But they don't replace him using guests..

My take on your ideas.

1. The top 2 leagues run on different nights so don't clash. Im a NL supporter & have to accept that our no1 is almost always going to sign for a league above,  not a problem to me, they miss an occasional match but thats progress, to have a guest replacement  keeps the match competitive.

2. Not sure there is a problem with the current r/r rules. Rides taken by 1 rider above & 3 below in the team is fair & spreads the rides out in the team. A team can always have a no 8 rider & replace all the r/r rides with the no 8.  Very fair as i see & is not in need of changing.  Why give an extra 3 rides to 1 rider, guaranteed 7 rides puts massive pressure on him.

3. Why would you take a rider out of a team & then have him sitting around all season in case a rider is injured/missing. 

4. How can you have less teams?  Who decides which teams cannot ride this season?  There are only 7 teams in the Premier league now,  having less teams would mean riding against the same team way to often. If this was the case & it released riders i cannot see any rider being prepared to pay for bikes, mechanic, van etc & sit around all season (on the bench) in case of an injury.  What happens if the reserve rider sitting around has a higher average than the injured/missing rider, he won't be able to take his place.  What happens if the injured/missing rider is a no1 & the only reserve with bikes sitting doing nothing has a 3 point average, almost a certain loss for that team & hardly worth supporters paying to watch a thrashing. The Prem league has 7 teams, if each team had 3 riders in reserve (on the bench)  thats 21 riders sitting at home all season with bikes, van etc waiting for a chance of a team replacement ride!!  Not practical at all & there would never be that many riders available. 

I don't know what goes on in Poland & Sweden with the replacement rules, its bad enough trying to understand the British ones.

 

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Poland and Sweden replace injured riders with unattached riders...

They find it it adds a modicum of credibility to ensure fans, sponsors and media remain interested.. ;)

They can do this because they work on supply exceeding demand, (particularly Poland), meaning riders do have to wait to be given a chance..

Where as over here it does appear the whole set up is driven by the desire to provide riders with as many nights Speedway as is possible, regardless of who they end up representing on any given evening..

Edited by mikebv

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Guests are a necessary evil in British Speedway.

i cannot foresee a day when the BSPA would entertain a squad system.

They do need restricting which the rules at the moment are tending to do.

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4 hours ago, Gunner85 said:

Guests are a necessary evil in British Speedway.

i cannot foresee a day when the BSPA would entertain a squad system.

They do need restricting which the rules at the moment are tending to do.

But with them the wider media simply won't take it seriously and give it coverage..

And Sponsors from major brands won't put their name to something that is in all honesty a 'bit Mickey Mouse'..

Last year's play off where riders from neither finalist were allowed to compete, and then it was sanctioned they could be swapped, would have brought any major sponsors name into that ludicrous scenario and reflected on their 'brand'..

And that wouldn't have been something they would have been too impressed with I would have thought..

And in Speedway (in Britain) there are sadly too many situations which unfortunately would reflect less than positively on any major sponsors..

 

Edited by mikebv
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8 hours ago, mikebv said:

But with them the wider media simply won't take it seriously and give it coverage..

 

 

Been here before ..the wilder media gave speedway loads of coverage when had guests not so many I grant you but still guests .. they also gave mass media to the World  Championship that had some of most mickey mouse and unfair rules you can have . Speedway has always micke ymouse  rules but its not  stop it from  being popular or getting Media attention .

To much is made of what the public and the media think of the rules .

Edited by orion
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14 minutes ago, orion said:

Been here before ..the wilder media gave speedway loads of coverage when had guests not so many I grant you but still guests .. they also gave mass media to the World  Championship that had some of most mickey mouse and unfair rules you can have . Speedway has always mickey rules but its not  stop it from  being popular or getting Media attention .

To much is made of what the public and the media think of the rules .

In those days the big difference was domestic speedway wasn't the narrative...

It had barely any coverage, unlike today....

Crowds went to watch their local teams on the back of the sport being beamed into living rooms every other week or so, at Individual, WTC and Test match levels..

And as only three channels existed the riders on show, PC, Mauger, Olsen etc etc became household names and the sport domestically was 'big' by riding on the back of this coverage....

You also often only found out that guests were there after you had paid to get in, unlike in today's instant news era..

Put simply. What you could get away with then, you cannot now...

So using an operating model that's fifty years old (and failing), isn't I would suggest, a great plan to keep following..

Edited by mikebv

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On 6/14/2019 at 10:41 PM, Trees said:

Just don't name the guest, call him Stars/Pirates/Robins etc etc Guest Rider, in fact maybe it's the way forward not naming any rider, just referring to them as Stars 1-7 etc etc.   Main thing is to make sure the racing is exciting, imo it's the one major factor for the survival of our sport .... better than it ever has been, how, god knows ....... it's down to the riders and promoters .....

You reckon? :o:o:blink:

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3 hours ago, mikebv said:

In those days the big difference was domestic speedway wasn't the narrative...

It had barely any coverage, unlike today....

Crowds went to watch their local teams on the back of the sport being beamed into living rooms every other week or so, at Individual, WTC and Test match levels..

Sorry, but I have to disagree...

League racing DID receive a lot of coverage back, just not live coverage on cable channels that a lot of people don't have.

League results (with top scorers) were listed given in the national newspapers.

There were regular articles (several times a week) about league racing featured in the national newspapers.

The team lineups for meetings in London were published in the London Evening News.

League matches were often shown on Regional TV stations (Anglia TV is the one that springs to mind).

League results were given on several radio stations - LBC and Radio Luxembourg are the ones I remember...

Okay, these may seem antiquated now, but it was all we had back then. And EVERYONE was exposed to speedway as a result. And EVERYONE knew what speedway was. And EVERYONE knew that they were driving past a "speedway" stadium. Today, the only way you will drive past a speedway stadium is if you are actually going there...

Let's not forget that other sports only had the same coverage as speedway did. We didn't have multiple live football matches shown every day in the 60's and 70's, and crowds weren't any lower back then.

Plus, I think it is ridiculous to claim that crowds "went to watch their local teams on the back of the sport being beamed into their living rooms"; if anything, it was the other way round. We had the fanbase long before ITV's World of Sport came along, and the television coverage was the result of having an exciting and successful sport already in place. TV coverage was a natural progression from successful domestic speedway, and not the other way round.

Steve

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1 hour ago, chunky said:

Sorry, but I have to disagree...

League racing DID receive a lot of coverage back, just not live coverage on cable channels that a lot of people don't have.

League results (with top scorers) were listed given in the national newspapers.

There were regular articles (several times a week) about league racing featured in the national newspapers.

The team lineups for meetings in London were published in the London Evening News.

League matches were often shown on Regional TV stations (Anglia TV is the one that springs to mind).

League results were given on several radio stations - LBC and Radio Luxembourg are the ones I remember...

Okay, these may seem antiquated now, but it was all we had back then. And EVERYONE was exposed to speedway as a result. And EVERYONE knew what speedway was. And EVERYONE knew that they were driving past a "speedway" stadium. Today, the only way you will drive past a speedway stadium is if you are actually going there...

Let's not forget that other sports only had the same coverage as speedway did. We didn't have multiple live football matches shown every day in the 60's and 70's, and crowds weren't any lower back then.

Plus, I think it is ridiculous to claim that crowds "went to watch their local teams on the back of the sport being beamed into their living rooms"; if anything, it was the other way round. We had the fanbase long before ITV's World of Sport came along, and the television coverage was the result of having an exciting and successful sport already in place. TV coverage was a natural progression from successful domestic speedway, and not the other way round.

Steve

Some fair points Steve, but still beg to differ..

The leagues might have had results shown in most newspapers but, unlike today, they didn't come under any scrutiny as to how those points shown were delivered..

Also. The offering you saw on TV back then was credible and what you saw every Saturday (and the odd Wednesday night) wetted the appetite for attending domestic speedway..

PC, for example, brought thousands to Hyde Rd, and elsewhere, because of what he did on Saturday afternoons in living rooms the length and breadth of the country wearing England colours, not BV colours...

Maybe it was a bit of chicken and the egg as to what came first, and who benefited from whom..

Bottom line though is what passes for domestic speedway today on TV, ie the way it is ran, won't engage too many to invest their emotional loyalty into it..

And for a team sport, that's not a great place to be in..

Edited by mikebv

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Guests are a necessary evil. I've always said though that guest riders for Premiership should always be Championship riders with an average of 4.50 or less. Then that rider takes the No7 position and the others move up a position. R/R should only be available after a 3rd rider in the team is missing. 

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8 minutes ago, Daniel Smith said:

Guests are a necessary evil. I've always said though that guest riders for Premiership should always be Championship riders with an average of 4.50 or less. Then that rider takes the No7 position and the others move up a position. R/R should only be available after a 3rd rider in the team is missing. 

So if say Jason Doyle is out injured you replaced him with a championship rider of 4.50 ?  

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