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The current state of the SGB CHAMPIONSHIP

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2 hours ago, iainb said:

Spot on! Great Britain Speedway Team has arguably the best junior programme in Speedway, even the envy of Poland apparently and the dumps it's developed riders into a 2nd league flooded with top league talent. The likes of Leon Flint, Tom Brennan, Joe & Dan Thompson, Jack Thomas, Anders Rowe, Drew Kemp, Dan Gilkes, Jordan Jenkins, Jason Edwards & Jordan Palin should be heat leader/ top second string standard in the CL instead they're second string / reserves.

It's really all a bit of a mess at the moment with the Polish restrictions and PL only having a 6 team league and until that changes things are likely to remain the same

Agree. And those youngsters progress is totally being stifled by the structure.  Of those mentioned only Brennan and Gilkes looked to have made progress this season.  The rest are being drained of confidence.  As soon as they progress from a CL reserve birth they're up against established riders with, most likely, bigger budgets and far greater experience.

I do think the young kids need to earn success but at present it's like putting the winner of the Red Bull Rookies straight into MotoGP, on the same bike.

Those are a great crop of talented youngsters but yet again we have zero riders in SGP2 (World U21) so the system clearly isn't aiding their progression.

There also seems to be some great talent at 250cc level. Let's hope there's a career path for them before they become disinterested due to lack of opportunity.

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2 hours ago, Falcon1983 said:

The BSPL wont cease their control over the sport in the UK and they will always seek to look after their own interests first.

The fact they have allegedly turned away interest from Discovery to take over the sport in this country shows so watch in the future Sweden, Denmark, Poland etc pull away even further when a multi billion dollar company invest in those leagues from top to bottom 

Wow. Massive mistake if they have. It's early days for Discovery Sports but they've identified that the product is great but only if you have great riders and they don't want to leave that to chance.  Hence SGP2, 3 and 4. And of course that's more content to fill their schedules.

You'd imagine they'd want a structure to aid that strategy which would be exactly what is required in this country.

I genuinely don't know but do any promoters make money from speedway operations at present? I thought it was basically a vanity project for small businessmen or enthusiast's? Which begs the question, why wouldn't they let someone else take the strain.  Especially as I imagine their small businesses are under pressure as it is without having to worry about how much the best available guest wants as a guarantee!! 

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2 hours ago, topsoil said:

How we must yearn for the good old days when teams like Scunthorpe and Workington would go to Eastbourne and Rye House and regularly get beat 64-14. Now THAT was entertainment.

two teams that I think were expelled from the league for fielding under strength teams.

as a result of the league expanding too much due to its success.

so yes it wasn't perfect and there'll always be the chance that some teams will be rubbish. I remember Newcastle signing Neil Evitts, former British Champion, as #1 and he was garbage, it can happen. But in divisions of so few teams where the top six make the play offs if you have a couple of teams which aren't competitive it all becomes a bit academic. We can probably name the top 7 in this years CL already. Poole, Leicester and Glasgow have probably done enough to qualify already. To the point that we might just as well skip to the play offs.

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8 minutes ago, enotian said:

two teams that I think were expelled from the league for fielding under strength teams.

as a result of the league expanding too much due to its success.

so yes it wasn't perfect and there'll always be the chance that some teams will be rubbish. I remember Newcastle signing Neil Evitts, former British Champion, as #1 and he was garbage, it can happen. But in divisions of so few teams where the top six make the play offs if you have a couple of teams which aren't competitive it all becomes a bit academic. We can probably name the top 7 in this years CL already. Poole, Leicester and Glasgow have probably done enough to qualify already. To the point that we might just as well skip to the play offs.

Six out of eight teams make the playoffs in Poland. Same in Sweden. Are they doing it wrong as well?

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48 minutes ago, cinderfella said:

The whole average system needs restructured and team building built around  45pts. If they insist heat 15 doesn't count in averages then it shouldn't count in match scores either.

Heat 15 does count in a riders average.  It's just that the riders average is based on 4 rides not 5. i.e.  if you score 15 from five every match your average is 12.00 not 15.00. Therefore based on 4 rides each for seven riders the total team average is based on 14 heats.  Of which 6 points are available so if you want equal team strengths 42.00 is the magic number.

However, I do agree that the averages are a farce.  They are certainly not accurate to two decimal places to suitably rank riders in order or ability.  On the basis that all riders don't meet each of their opponents an equal amount of times and any rider can benefit from an opponents misfortune. They can only be used as a guide to ranking riders of similar ability.

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12 minutes ago, topsoil said:

Six out of eight teams make the playoffs in Poland. Same in Sweden. Are they doing it wrong as well?

no I have no problem with the play offs. my point is if you only have six teams good enough to make those play offs then why bother with the league competition.  There's little or no Jeopardy. Especially if the league competition features numerous massive home wins of little or no entertainment value. 

I don't follow Poland and Sweden closely enough to know if they have the same problem of uncompetitive teams but some of the Extraliga matches I've watched seem evenly matched.

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39 minutes ago, enotian said:

two teams that I think were expelled from the league for fielding under strength teams.

as a result of the league expanding too much due to its success.

so yes it wasn't perfect and there'll always be the chance that some teams will be rubbish. I remember Newcastle signing Neil Evitts, former British Champion, as #1 and he was garbage, it can happen. But in divisions of so few teams where the top six make the play offs if you have a couple of teams which aren't competitive it all becomes a bit academic. We can probably name the top 7 in this years CL already. Poole, Leicester and Glasgow have probably done enough to qualify already. To the point that we might just as well skip to the play offs.

Because when he signed he had a knee injury, which was "going to be sorted out" and he was not going to be the 9.00 (or whatever it was) average rider until he got his knee sorted.  He rode three matches for us and was never seen again (until this season when he was in the pits helping a rider out!). 

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7 hours ago, Sings4Speedway said:

Perhaps if the conversation rate actually got to 2.0 as was the plan and highest average applied both ways then the doubling up / down would see a reduction. As ever though the 5 year plans last 5 minutes.

Is the conversation rate of 2.0 someone who doesn't let the other person get a word in edge ways, or am I getting confused...... again....

Edited by gazzac
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3 hours ago, gazzac said:

Is the conversation rate of 2.0 someone who doesn't let the other person get a word in edge ways, or am I getting confused...... again....

Definitely putting the blame on auto correct. I guess i made a poor attempt at spelling conversion and an even worse job of checking what I typed. 

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