DK Rides Again

Perhaps the breweries should try a bit harder. My local convenience store will sell me 6 500ml cans of Stella for £5.50, the equivalent quantity in my local pub will cost me the best part of 20 quid; combine that with the fact that I'm a filthy smoker and it's not hard to work out why I don't go near boozers, if I can help it. I'm afraid I think £3.50 for a pint is extortion, for that money, I expect the glass to lift itself to my lips; if the pubs want my business, they will have to sharpen their pencils a bit. A little research shows there was a Nottingham Arms on Prince Regent Lane, so not far from the stadium; gone now though, demolished in the early 2000s. Anyway, all this talk of pubs, surely a pie and a cup o' char, on what's left of the terraces, would be more appropriate

I'm not much good on pubs, all I can tell you is that I used to be resident DJ at the Crown & Anchor, which was, almost, on the corner of Old Kent Road and Ilderton Road (the main drag to Hornshay Street) and is now a Chinese. I can probably organise an earlier gig with the Sydenham Society, or something similar, if you're interested. Hatchem should probably be the expert on the area, full stop, seeing as how he's chosen the name of the area, before it was called New Cross.

There's a rather sad irony that this post was in response to the OP who, in the intervening 18 months or so, has also now passed the chequered flag of life. Let's hope that odd and dud have found a way to be reunited in some way.

I've done a quick forum search and can't find any mention of him, so I thought this would be the place to ask. Looking for some information on something else, I picked up on a bit of info that, despite reading this book several times, has never registered before. In Michael Scott's book on Barry Sheene, 'The Will To Win', he mentions Barry's substantial property, with it's self contained living quarters for his parents and his uncle Arthur "the speedway rider"; in another article I found on the net, Barry is described as coming from racing stock, starting with his uncle Arthur Sheene, "a speedway professional". Not being quite as steeped in the history of the sport as others, I don't know anything about Arthur and his career, so what's the story?

Thanks for that chaps. Slightly disappointing though; the way the pieces I quoted were written, it was as if we should all know who Arthur Sheene was and that he was a major influence on Barry's career, not that he didn't make it past the earliest days of UK speedway, 30 odd years before Barry did anything serious on a bike. Perhaps there's a bigger story, yet to be uncovered.....

I've asked before and never got an answer, but whatever happened to Rocky Coutts, who I seem to remember I saw several times at Wimbledon?

Wasn't the story that, after a long time trying to get the project off the ground, they finally got close to the finishing post, only for someone to break into their storage area and nick half the kit, including bikes and riding gear? IIRC, they ran out of money and inclination and gave it up as a bad job, not very surprisingly.

Hopefully after because, if not, then all the money everyone is so keen to say is being wasted, will really have been pee'd up the wall!

That's a coincidence, when I first saw this thread I wondered if there was any connection to the late, great Reg Gutteridge, it's not the commonest of surnames.

Last time I looked (and don't ask me why I was looking!) Janice Nicholls lived in Hednesford and was married to Brian Meacham, former lead singer with the wonderfully named 'Brian Gulliver and the Travellers'. She had entered the world of modernism and she had a website, www.foive.co.uk I think it was.

They may have been better than most, but that doesn't mean that it was enough. I spent a fair bit of time at the Groveway, after my brother moved to MK in the late 70s, and I don't remember having to push people out of the way to get a good viewing position; after being a regular at Wimbledon, I kept expecting some tumbleweed to come drifting past. I still have my Knights pin badge though, and I still think that nickname is one of the best that's ever been attached to a speedway team.

Probably the same clown that thought it might be a good idea to spread the word of speedway, in order to try and make it a properly recognised professional sport; it's called promotion, something that the UK is regularly slagged off for not doing, by many members of this forum.

I always thought, as a kid, that you needed a 'different' name to be a speedway rider and still, to this day, I hear the occasional name and think "he should've been in speedway!" My perrenial favourites are Wimbledon second halvers, Pip Austen and Rocky Couttes (does anyone know what happened to Rocky, I've asked a couple of times and never got an answer). I also like the sound of Jerran Hart (I presume he's no relation?).

It won't help you for your images that are already out there Jim, but you could watermark anything you upload to the web in the future; it's not hard to do and it could save you a lot of heartache.

When you're young, ambitious and fearless, and know you have talent, you will try anything. In most kinds of motorsport, you can get away with the odd mistake; in speedway, where nobody has anywhere to go, if it all goes wrong, you can't afford to be that cavalier. I hope he learns soon because, if he doesn't, he's either going to do serious damage to someone, or someone is going to do serious damage to him. I said on the BGP thread that, whilst his 'handbags' moment with Nicholls might have seemed like a laugh to most, if he continues with the attitude, sooner or later he's going to find himself in the fence. He's a very talented young man, but he's on a very steep learning curve; as the saying goes, "A good man knows his limitations", and I don't think he's a 'good man' yet.

I'd read $300 for Nicholls and $500 for Sayfutdinov (why would it be a Dollar fine, surely Euros would be more appropriate?), but I don't recall any link being posted to back that up. As for being punched while wearing a helmet, it does make your ears ring for a couple of minutes, but I reckon the bloke that did the punching would have some knuckles that smart for a few days!

Thanks for saying that, I really get so frustrated with watching racing (of all sorts, 4 wheels and 2) these days. In my day, you went racing with the intention of either winning or having fun, or maybe both; if you were in a position to do it to win, you put up with having a few scrapes, that's what it was all about, you didn't have some spurious rule to rely on if you weren't good enough to make the grade on the day. Speedway is meant to be about four blokes racing very closely, on bikes that don't have the advantage of having brakes or gears; in those circumstances, the riders should know how to control them in such a way that they don't fall off at the drop of a hat (Sayfutdinov proved he was capable of that in an early heat tonight) because that's what is quite likely to happen; except they have rules, that they can exploit, that allow them to fall off left, right and centre, and get another rider excluded as a result. That's not racing, that's playing a game and, is I've said many times before, speedway suffers from being viewed by the outside world as being a game; when it grows up and becomes a sport, then it might progress and grow. If I had been refereeing tonight, here's what my decisions would've been; Jonsson wouldn't have been excluded for the 'racing accident', the Harris/Andersen incidents would've been all riders back (or possibly the fallers would've been excluded for not getting up/falling when they really shouldn't have) and Nicholls and Sayfutdinov would've been watching the meeting from the stands for bringing the sport into disrepute.

I don't see how you can possibly reach that conclusion; both incidents were virtually identical and yet, on the first occasion, the rider that hit another rider was deemed to be the cause of the stoppage, in the second, it was the rider that fell. One of those decisions was right, but both of them can't be (and I don't really care who wins, who doesn't or who gets excluded). There is a definite problem with consistancy in refereeing, even it seems (according to the Sky coverage) when the question comes up as to when a ref pushes the red light button. But there is a bigger problem with the way the rules are set out and how competitors want to absolve themselves from blame by passing the buck to officials, and then not agree with that decision (and not just in speedway). To my mind, all of the incidents in that meeting were 'racing accidents'; I didn't see anything that looked malicious to me, given that these are meant to be big boys racing at the highest level of, what promotes itself to be, a professional sport. There's too much emphasis on too many rules these days; if you want to compete at the highest level of racing, you can expect to be knocked off the odd time, so it's up to you to either avoid it, learn how to cope with it without falling over, or pick yourself up and start again. If you can't get up, then the ref can stop the race and start it again with whoever's left to be in the race; if it's blatently obvious that a rider has disadvantaged another, then exclude him. Other than that, if you want to race, expect some knocks and deal with it, it's the name of the game.

Only saw it on a web feed, so we didn't see any of they crowd trouble, it was very briefly mentioned but no detail. I think it says a lot about the level that speedway stands at in the world of sport that, in a major televised event, two riders can have a fist fight on the track and stay in the meeting; if I were Scott Nicholls I would've walked away, if I were Sayfutdinov, I'd be careful with that sort of attitude, in case I found someone a bit more experienced who didn't mind putting me in the fence. Can't see the problem with Andersen using another rider's bike and crew; they're all meant to be built within the same set of rules and the best people to look after a bike are the people that normally do, and he explained in interview that his main bike packed up and his reserve wasn't up to the job. Not a major fan of Pedersen, but I thought he was seriously hard done by, given the decisions the ref had made previously; I thought both of the incidents in that heat should've been all riders back, but given that Harris was excluded for his prang, then the only conclusion was that Andersen would be as well. I imagine he didn't bother to complain because he knew it wouldn't do him any good, and he seems to be resigned to the fact that things aren't going his way and this isn't his year; maybe adopting that attitude will take some of the pressure off him and his results will improve.

Could be, if a speedway promoter decides to pursue it; there's some seriously talented motorcyclists to have come out of Ireland in years gone by. It might just add a welcome new flavour to 'Team GB'.

Hope it's a good meeting

If Scott Nicholls is the best that we can manage, we should give up and go home now. I didn't see all of the GP tonight, but from what I did see, Nicholls was a disgrace, he seemed to be slow, both in machinery and temperament; it says much to me that the only way he could score a point was to intimidate his fellow countryman into giving best to him. I know people here aren't too keen on building up riders before they're ready, but I do wonder if Ed Kennett or Tai might not better represent us, at least they might have the fight of youth, unlike Nicholls, who seems to be just making up the numbers because of his own ego trip.

Was that the team that toured here in the very late 70s/early 80s? I don't remember what year it was, but I did see them annihilate Milton Keynes Knights at the Groveway; I think Jiri Stancl was the Captain.

Still looking like speedway's only worth a tenner then, are there any promoters in the house?

Calculated against average earnings, 70p is about a tenner. Using your figures, one adult, one child, two transfers and two programmes would be about 15 quid, which still compares favourably with today's prices; a family ticket for two adults, two children and four programmes at Lakeside, would cost you £44, for your dad to take you to the same place would be £23.