mikebv

And PC

Not sure which letters we dont use..

Janowski another whose career is going backwards.. Smarzlik, as he always seems to do as a season progresses, just gets better and better.. Will be a firm favourite for another World Title I would think..

He used to at least be around second at the first turn, now he is often third or fourth.. That cut back he does in the first two turns has paid many a dividend over the years but you cant keep relying on it working.. Expecting it to work against 3 top lads is a high risk strategy if you want success at a world level..

Woffy's gating has been truly appalling for the past season and a half at least.. Miss gate, then blast around the boards is his regular tactic these days.. Great to watch when it comes off, but against top riders regularly hitting the first turn third or fourth wont deliver much success.. I would suggest he is maybe just still in the Top 10 in the world but not in the very top echelon anymore.. Bikes and talent still good enough, but starting simply miles off..

Maybe the almost "we've got no chance" attitude when teams race Leszno is starting to unravel a bit? If you wrote that septet down on paper not many I would suggest would read it and think "Wow! They must be the best in the world"... They are though, it appears, "a team" which several of those with a higher proportion of "world class riders" dont always appear to be.. The Smektala/Kubera combination at Junior level was always a strong plus for them which no longer exists, so who knows, maybe this year whoever they go head to head against in the play offs will fancy their chances..?

As has been said in other Leszno meetings, as a team they dont have any truly World Class riders other than Emil.. Yet seem to pull out great team performances with different riders on any given night stepping up to the plate when needed. And heavily relying on Kubera.. A few teams going 'head to head' should feel they have a chance against them this year..

That looks like a large 50% of capacity crowd.. Maybe Polish 50%'s dont mean half..?

I think that is the sports dilemma (over here).. The IOW seem to promote EVERY meeting as if it was a one off event, which with some of their fans on holiday it very well could be their only chance to impress them.. And for their regulars 'something different' regularly will keep it fresh.. Team success (as in winning the league) almost appears secondary to the success of providing their customer base a 'great night out' and given the lack of kudos and financial reward for winning any UK competition, I would suggest it's a very good operating model.. UK Team Speedway is basically a busted flush if you measure success by the numbers who attend, with many who have fallen away over the years basically giving up on the concept, hence no longer bother attending.. (But often still remain as very interested followers of the sport in their several thousands).. Therefore it's dilemma is can it run itself successfully as a 'Team Sport' concept (and bring back some of the lapsed thousands), or does it need to do 'something different'? The old adages though of "always doing what you've always done will only deliver what you've always had" and the definition of insanity being "doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different result" is something that those who run the sport should have written large on their meeting room walls..

Agreed, but if a lower grade of rider on offer, and no flight costs, hotel bills, van hire, uk mechanic, etc etc etc, to be factored in by the rider when he is negotiating points money, then maybe the entry price point will drop commensurately?

I actually think that an amalgam of the 2nd and 3rd divisions could be the way forward for the sport.. Whether it will attract many overseas riders I am not sure given the money on offer will need to be relative to the standard of rider.... But, for British Speedway, and the oportunities it would create for British riders, and their development, it might not be a bad thing.. It would also mean a fixture list being driven by customer availability, and run to a timetable when they can get there, and not when riders can get there when it suits their global agenda.. My team get decent crowds for 3rd tier Speedway and if a team made up of 2nd/3rd Div riders was the only team they had to watch, I would suggest crowds would be pretty much on a par that the 'first team' get now.. And much cheaper to run obviously.. UK Speedway is pretty much down to its die hards who go and watch 'any speedway', and hardly any 'crowd puling top names' ride here so there is a minimal amount of fans who only go to the see 'the names'... And when (if) this bloody pandemic ever finishes, every sport should get a 'bounce boost' at the turnstiles when it returns. . So, if there ever was a time to restructure from the bottom up to build a better future then surely it is now?

Really? 2019 Top 2 - Poole 52, Swindon 50. Bottom - 2 KL 31, Peterborough 20 2018 Top 2 - KL 53, Somerset 47. Bottom 2 -Wolves 34, Leicester 23 2017 Top 2 - Swindon 66, Wolves 63 Bottom 2 - KL 29, Leicester 27 2016 Top 2 - BV 64, Poole 59 Bottom 2 - Coventry 33, Leicester 21 2015 Top 2 - Poole 66, Coventry 61 Bottom 2 - Wolves 28, Lakeside 27 And that's with a max of just 8 teams per league in some seasons and seven in others.. And the same huge difference between top and bottom goes back regularly from 2015 ad nauseam.. Before every season when the teams are known, the 'cannon fodder' gets predicted on here, and those predictions are very rarely wrong.. Some balanced league. .

I have been on forums where you cant type Scunthorpe. ..

The block pass appears to be very much 'de rigueur' in Poland. . Maybe 'Hold the Line' should be the song played before the race to remind the riders?

It's the Speedway equivalent of Football's "I'd like to see him do that away at Stoke City on a cold Tuesday night in December"...

Spot on.. A team that has three out of the top seven best riders in the world from last year shouldnt be getting smashed this way.. The system in Poland is fine.. Teams not performing some days is sport...

His 'sudden rise' after so many years of average riding is being mirrored by his 'sudden demise'... Strange, ,

Hopefully the announcer playing 'Jump' before that start was deliberate. ..

Yeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!

All fiddling whilst Rome was burning around them.... It is wasn't so sad given the way they have so negatively impacted the sport by their actions, and driven so many fans away, it would be hilarious to list every piece of nonsense dreamt up..

Imagine being a major company who wanted to get involved sponsoring the league and gaining access to this thread and reading about the way the sport self governs... Fred Karno's circus would be a better bet for them.. Did Matt Ford manipulate the situation? Well, if he did, (and who will ever know?), it was because he could... And that is the biggest nonsense in all of this.. A local Darts and Crib league would be embarrassed to run itself the same way..

"It's speedway Captain, but not as we know it"... Great afternoons entertainment.... Dave must be in overtime this week...

Interesting how the names of the riders were very well known yet their domestic teams were seldom mentioned.. Many is the time when I mention Speedway that the response is the usual "I used to go", but the next line invariably only mentions certain riders they remember, with any mention of where they watched their Speedway very much a secondary consideration. Almost like the teams they watched were very much secondary to who they were watching ride.. I would suggest a similar apathy to team racing that exists today for many fans who just go along now to watch 'the racing' rather than having any large emotional stake in the outcome of the match.. Yet promoters have for a great many years tried desperately to put one over their rivals to be 'successful', using all sorts of various wide and wonderful ways too numerous to mention, but we all pretty much can name them.. They, at least, seem to still take it all seriously, but sadly, by their very actions, no one else can.. And no 'team sport' can ever be successful if you don't have any emotional attachment to the team you follow.. Sort that and maybe UK Speedway could start to rise again..

For me, it started to decline when 'England' stopped ruling the Speedway roost at international level.. The TV companies and tabloid press lapped up (no pun intended), the way England regularly won Best Pairs and World Team cups, and obviously in Peter Collins had a dare devil young hero that transcended the Speedway world and was amongst the most well known sportsmen in the country. Not only winning a World Title, but doing it in a way that showed just how exciting and breathtaking the sport can be.. Then, towards the late 70's and early 80's the UK started training up many Danes and Americans in particular to take over their previous World Champion mantle.. All of a sudden, there wasnt quite the same coverage given to USA and Denmark victories by the mainstream media, (and why should there be?) However, instead of focusing on getting back on top of the pile by having a detailed, fit for purpose training plan to provide young English riders with the opportunity to progress, the authorities instead then opened up the 2nd Division to foreign riders which allowed them to train up even more nations' riders, who took up team places that young British riders used to have.. And finally as we hit the 90's winning at club level became all that mattered with Promoters trying desperately to get one over their fellow promoters by ensuring that their team was best. Completely ignoring the blatant fact that league title wins for Poole, Wolves, Belle Vue, Coventry etc etc etc had not one jot of positive impact to the sport nationally amongst generic sports fans and national media.. And had lessening yearly impact to even die hard fans when they considered the often 'Mickey Mouse' operating model that facilitated the winners' victory.. Hence winning at club level became all encompassing so clubs filled their teams with journeymen foreign riders, who would then throughout the season get replaced by even more journeymen foreign riders when averages dictated. And would also every now and again unearth a foreign 'wunderkind' on a ridiculously low entrance average which would provide that team with a 'fourth heat leader' at reserve, which would decide so many matches in their favour.. However, the team with the next '4 point superstar' may have cared about their victorious season , but hardly anyone else did.. In short, it's been a crap operating model for nigh on 40 years and if your intention was to promote your sport positively to millions of the nation's sports fans then it was as wide of the mark as it possibly could have been.. However, looking at the work being done around the young talent that's out there now, maybe, just maybe, the penny has finally dropped and a successful 'Great Britain' team will soon be regularly back on the top step of international meetings, with all the extended coverage from the wider sports media it will bring. In Woffy and Robert Lambert the country truly already have two who can compete at the very top, which can only help enormously to start generating wider interest in the sport if they get publicised well.. However. Four or five other World Class riders in the top 20 would certainly add to the publicity the sport gets, and can only have a positive knock on impact to the domestic leagues and their teams..

The worrying issue is that there wasn't massive crowds anywhere to 'flock back'.... Many on here are lapsed fans who got out of the habit of going, and found they didnt miss it, so you can only hope the extended break doesn't remove the enthusiasm of the basically die hards that attend each week.. As that would be disastrous... Putting the most positive spin on it, maybe the break will get those less frequent visitors to attend more regularly, and "you don't know what you've lost till it's gone" may inspire plenty of lapsed fans who still have an affinity to the sport, and follow it closely but don't attend domestic speedway, to attend again..