Lioness

In fairness to Trelawny they have big signs all around the area advertising the speedway.....just a pity the arrows to the excellent track aren't a bit more prominent! Other than that it seems just to be the occassional AA signs-thats all it is to Armadale certainly although sadly Glasgow doesn't even have that as far as I can recall. For a few tracks you have to ask what exactly constitutes the local press as many are now located outwith their natural area. I believe the Edinburgh Evening news gives good coverage to the Monarchs for example but it is not the local paper for the track location. Up here the Sun and Daily Record have both given speedway a little more coverage this year than I recall in the past but lets face it, its a minority sport as far as the sports editors are concerned so they aint gonna give it prominance. The same goes for the Sky coverage, or rather lack of it, for PL speedway. In all honesty Sky have done a lot to increase the profile of speedway and its perhaps a bit like shooting ourselves in the foot to critisise them for not showing PL/CL matches. After all they very rarely show Torquay v Yeovil in football! I think they are wrong but 'Elite League' sounds more prestigious than the CLRC and in their marketeers opinions will attract more viewers. They did show the occassional PL track during their live speedway meetings but that seemed to fall by the wayside sadly. Both Edinburgh and Glasgow have in the past or present had pretty decent coverage on local radio but again the local radio for the Armadale area don't even know it exists! As far as advertising goes, it costs, believe me it costs! Again I can only go by Edinburgh and I believe they do a lot in local schools but when you are working on a budget paying a couple of thousands for an advert isn't giong to be top of your priority list! I think your points are all good ones but we need to re-size them to the affordability of speedway promotions. As for the BSPA website I dont think it will ever have credability to be honest. I very quickly discovered it was a waste of time looking at it when most of the news is outdated and covered on here by fans well before it hits the BSPA site anyhow!

Sorry Mylor but from your comments and teh ehading of the thread I took it that was what you were meaning. Apologies for the misinterpretaion. Still disagree though-I dont think speedway is a 'big' enough sport to sustain promotion and relegation on any other than an irregular financial basis

Re cricket it is a national sport in England and gets the funding and support in line with that. Afraid I dont think there is really an anology to be drawn between cricket and speedway. Cricketers dont play in different countries on different days of the week either lol! Hey I dont claim to ber an expert on Scottish speedway either btw-far from it! I wish I had the answers, I don't but I am convinced that trying to force relegation and promotion on clubs would kill the sport rather than help it. Perhaps there will be major changes which allow that in the future but I reckon it will be a long time in the future. Thanks fro the reply Mylor

Aww guys thank you, dunno what else to say. other than to return the compliment xx

Welcome aboard Covboy The thing that struck me about speedway when I started going was the people who went. When you go to the meeting you can more or less say exactly the same to the person next to you and irrespective of team loyalites they'll probably help you through the meeting telling you the basics and explaining things as they happen! Any other forum folks going? there was previously a thread covering a few of the basic rules-if no one else finds it first I'll search for it later tonight and put the url up. Enjoy it, thats the most important rule! lol EDIT:- actually its probably worth you taking a look at http://www.speedway-faq.org/ Its a 'wordy' site but I found it invaluable when I started taking an interest in speedway in explaining things!

For promotion and relegation to work in any sport you have to have some sort of pyraimd structure reaching all the way down. face it whether we like it or not speedway is no where near big enough or well supported enough to even contemplate it. It would kill the sport off. On the subject of 'at least one EL club' in Scotland, we had a discussion along similar lines at Ashfield recently between Edinburgh and Glasgow fans. The one thing we were all unanimous about was that one club needed the other to survive. Forcing through promotion and relegation on a minority support would only lead to it becoming regionalised as the further out teams slowly-or perhaps even not so slowly-folded and became part of the years gone by threads. Its like a fairy tale......a nice idea in principal but in reality it could never work. Look at what has happened to the grasstrack scene that was prevalent in Scotland 30 years ago. It now doesn't exist, its mostly a Suuth coast sport. The same would happen in speedway if it went down that route of forcing promotion and relegation, irrespective of trying 'incentives' for which I can't see where the money for would come from. If nothing else, pure economics and the north/south divide would see to that. it would be the quickest way of killing off speedway as a national sport imo. Sorry Mylor I think you come up with a lot of fantastic ideas and really think outside the square in a lot of things and have a lot to offer when it comes to discussions over how speedway can progress. However, this idea is one that I am afraid I think is way off the mark and a little niave to be honest. Just my opinion, no offence intended

Now now you just haven't planned this properly! Just cos he's not getting hitched yet doesn't matter.....have his stag do now anyhow cos if he leaves it much longer you'll all be too old to enjoy it anyhow :twisted: Oh and take the misses to Prague for a short break too......I enjoyed it so I'm sure she will! See! Sorted!

Mateusz we just hope your city can recover from Rico!!

Blimey Lioness are you that girl I used to get warned about when I was a kid and spent most of my life looking for. ;-) Only if she gave you nightmares ;-)

I'm sure I can arrange to get a list of local suppliers sent to you Discoll ;-) Actually a number of tesco's are now stocking it! If you are near my garage I insist you drop in for a bottle or six!

Sorry Joanne they must have seen you coming at that price :-( Thats more than twice the price of the dearest we found it at in Prague! Budvar is made in Ceske Budejovice in the South of the country and is the beer most Czechs drink. We got it no problem in Prague, even in Wenceslas Square althug most bars seemed to advertise the 'fashionable' foreign beers there with fashionable foreign prices! Philfromcov you are now a part Bairn! They sponsor Falkirk FC! 15 Krone is the norm for it in Prague Budvar Promotions signing off! (Just out of interest what did you reckon to it tho? Some find it an aquired taste, others love it straight off.....oh and in answering you may like to know I have 6 or 7 cases of it in my garage lol)

Nobody else seems to have noticed but well done to Chris Harris for his second place. Another good acheivement for a young Brit who has come on by leaps and bounds in the past season on two Well done Chris

You know somewhere here you can get budvar at 25p/pint Gem???! lol :twisted:

Just going back to the title of the thread there are a couple of new youngsters starting to impress, one at Glasgow who is only 14 and whose name has just escaped me again(!)-James someone(what makes it worse is I've met the lad ) and as Jojo I'm sure will agree Adam Roynon looks a little special

My tuppence worth is that Jeff seems to think of CL racing in the way I think of second half racing. To me, CL racing isn't the sunday league equivalent to Manchester Utd, CL is the Darlington equivalent to Man Utd and Darlo players get paid accordingly...... Second halves are the Sunday league equivalent imo

Ok the painkillers are having an effect, they must be cos......I think Scott Nicholls could win his first Grand Prix here. I just hope I havent put a curse on him by saying it! Crumpy will be there or there abouts though

Charlie Gjedde deserves a wild card after tonights performance. Wait a minute, should I put my Danish flag in my suitcase just in case :roll: :?: It'll make me very unpopular with the Berwick fans (sorry guys) but he should have been given a wild acrd wey ahead of Josef Franc imo. I wish Franc all the best in the GP but I think the GP is missing out on entertainment by overlooking Gjedde

You should be ok discoll....they had their full years quota 17th July, the night we spent at Prague airport cos of the rain :?

...and still no place for Charlie Gjedde. He must be feeling very hard done by over this ones wild cards :x

Hampden Park Well the Newport guys will tell you there is a Welsh GP so....... ;-)

Be warned its not as cheap as it was Chris....things are starting to go up in preparation for coming into Europe......STill a lot cheaper than home tho!

Barter with the taxi driver before hand discoll and agree a price. Prague airport is quite some way outside Prague and the guys who were over with us not on the official tour found they were better to barter with the local taxis rather than try and figure out the buses! Oh and a word of warning......if a flight from Tel Aviv lands immediately before yours go for a coffee/beer etc before trying to get through passport control! The Czechs are VERY strict on non European/Russian passport clearance as we found out!

Bloody Nora, I've had to cover the budgie up again. Typical dirty minded males eh?! Whats wrong with kisses round the navel? :?: What are you like? :roll: Maybe you should ask Scotty ;-)

Oops! missed this! In Prague itself, in the likes of Wenceslas Square, some of the rip off tourist joints err I mean elite bars will charge you as much as 55p! Shocking! Most of the time in Prague itself the average is 30-35p, in the outlying areas its 25p Now what makes you think I'm an expert in Budvar drinking? lol. Watch it or I'll show you my pictures of the brewery where its made! Have a good time guys....Gorgrel I'll watch for that Scotland flag!

Gem I've edited your original post to show that here thingy......if you want to see how I did it just click edit (its easier than trying to explain!) or else just give me a shout when you want one done