Islander15

Exactly. To add to that Ben has ridden Championship away tracks fairly regularly for the last couple of years whereas Ledwith hasn’t at all for 20 years.

Well enough clubs have signed him

Can we not agree that all 3 are genuinely very good prospects?

Nicely built team throughout. Potential at reserve and a decent heat leader trio who know West Row.

Yes Jason Pipe has said the fixture should facilitate this. Like IOW on a Thurs & Plymouth on a Fri etc. Or Leicester on a Sat & Mildenhall on a Sun.

Gives some top end strength too to be competitive.

He’s not been dropped. He’ll be at another NL team.

Macauley Leek confirmed. I expected him back at Mildenhall but more than happy with him on a false 3.00 average but for injury last season. Hopefully we still see King & Wirtzfeld as the other reserve and number 2. Then that’s a handy bottom 3!

That’s a very good team. Probably the most consistent top 3 the league will seem next year. Maybe weak in the second string positions but Woodhull, Rathbone & Bowen all know the NSS well and it’s a team that can get a good home lead over a play-off fixture. McGurk looked badly down on power on the big tracks last year so will be intriguing to see how he copes but they’ll always have a strong second reserve. Lots of average improvements potential, even in the top end with particularly Bailey’s average destined to go north.

Yes he’s 3.00.

Impressive first signing.

Yep! I think the other 6 are easy to guess and I’d be happy with that. A quality number 1, a pairing of decent reserves that should be able to beat most others and a middle order with some improvement potential.

That’s the theory but it didn’t work! There was heats where a second string and a reserve from each team rode but the reserve never beat the respective opposition’s second string (too predictable). There was 2 races where the number 1 & 5 riders met the opponent’s 3 & 4, nearly always resulting in a 5-1 to the 1 & 5 team. Imo the worst bit, second strings inevitably got inflated averages by beating reserves (which was predictable) and then all that happened was when the new averages came out they became a heat leader and didn’t score any points anymore (too predictable) and so the guy who was a heat leader originally then became a second string and wiped the floor of the reserves and second strings (too predictable). Then you ended up with a score chart of second strings scoring maximums or near to it, reserves getting big scores simply by doing well in 2 reserve races yet the heat leaders in the side barely scored. How do you explain to others that the ‘worst’ riders legitimately score more than the ‘best’ riders? Oh I hated the heat format haha.

Jason Edwards, Matt Marson, Elliot Kelly & Macauley Leek all fit to complete the team.

I was excited about this! Then found out there’s only 2 day tickets which are £35 each to stand! What a rip off when I could only attend on the Saturday night anyway. Disappointed

Can anyone post the article?

Surely Elliot Kelly will be back? Him & Leek would be very good reserves and not use up a lot of points. Yes. His Championship average is too high to allow him to do both leagues.

All that does is skew riders’ averages massively and create a massive problem the next season. Not to mention the boring heat formula.

It’s a strong top 4 with particularly improvement potential in Atkins who could easily add 2-3 points on his average. But it looks a poor bottom 3. The third signing is likely to be Bursill and none of those 3 have really pushed on at all despite having opportunities. It’s hard to judge when there isn’t other teams to compare against but the top 4 should win them most meetings at home and get the odd points away. It looks like a team that’ll be around 4th and get a play-off spot but they’re lacking something at the bottom end to really make them a title contender.

I would be happy with keeping 6 that ended last year and replacing Wood with someone upto 7.87. But the options are limited and it becomes Edwards (who I suspect is in demand), Jack Smith, Connor Coles, Connor Bailey (presumably at BV), James Cockle, Paul Hurry, Jon Armstrong, Dan Greenwood or Ben Hopwood (!). So realistically only the first 3 options are probably viable and they depend on money.

Couldn’t Gilkes & Jenkins be the top 2?

I hope the reserve assumes the average of the rider he’s replacing in the race. Else if you have a superstar reserve then you could purposely do that to bring him in and start him at the tapes. I’d like to think that a heat leader wouldn’t just ‘not fancy it’ seeing as he knows he won’t get paid to stay in the pits but could easily come third and get paid for second.

What about 1. Coles 2. Embleton 3. Marson 4. MacDonald 5. Ruddick 6. Millar 7. Freeman

It’s a maximum of 1 rider per team that’s averaged over 4.00 at some point. Not that they can’t ride at all.

Seeing as Edinburgh knew they were doing this, wouldn’t you have expected a youngster in their team at number 7 that could’ve raced for the Armadale Devils? Someone like Coles or Ruddick.