stevethelion

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From what I can see his average at the time of his injury for King Lynn was 5.56, so i presume that's what it will be. Which means , as the averages stand at the momment, his R/R rides will only be able to be taken by Ljung, Perry & Clegg, when there is a fixture clash with Sheffield, which at the momment looks like 7 possibly 8 matches.I know averages will change during the season & he might increase his while others move down, but as it stands at the minute leaves us pretty weak when Simon is missing. Unless of course there is any fixture changes to avoid this happening. Of course when the new race format is known they maybe different rules regarding R/R, so I suppose we will have to wait & see for sure.

To be honset no, there's not too many left to pick from. Other problem with picking Bjerre is that he would be doubling up with Peterborough & any matches he missed his rides would only be able to be covered by next rider up in the averages & then the 2 reserves which would leave us very weak.I know Peterboroughs home matches are Tuesdays but there are alot of other premier teams that ride Thursdays & Saturdays which most of Lions home meetings are on.

If it was Sundstrom at (7.22), that would leave 6.04 for the last rider & Bjerre is only 4.28, leaving 1.76 points unused, which would be a bit unwise looking at the strength of some of the other teams.

Friday night would clash with Doyle's Somerset fixtures, but agree Wednesday would seem more sensible than picking Thursday to ride 5 home meetings which does clash with lots of premier league meetings, especially if Morris signs for Lions & Sheffield.

Yes,5 home thursday meetings, plus 2 away, 7 in total.

If Morris does sign for Lions & Sheffield, & Sheffield buy him & become his parent club, they would have first choice with any fixture clashes. Looking at the fixtures released today, Lions have 7 thursday meetings, the same night as Sheffield ride.This means Morris would miss a quarter of the Lions league matches, that's also not taking into account any of Sheffield's away fixtures that might clash. Has much as i would love to see Morris at Leicester missing that amount of fixtures it would be a gamble to sign him as Lions would only be able to use R/R & the reserve pair don't look the strongest in the league.

I make it 11.64 left.

Got my renewal e-mail today too. Certainly not renewing before i've seen the team declared. I'm not impressed with the picks they made at reserve for a start, couldn't believe they went for Clegg when they had a choice from 12 other riders, hope i'm proved wrong but i'd have thought someone like Simon Lambert would have been a better bet, at least he might have scored 3 or 4 points & has more experience, To throw a 16 year old just out of the MDL into the pressures of the elite seems crazy & totally unfair on the lad. With no early-bird discount on the season ticket either i'll wait until the fixtures are announced before buying because it looks like fixtures could be on different days, already 3 league fixtures announced & all on different days ( sat., mon.& thurs) so keeping my options open before deciding to buy season ticket or not.

If Leicester picked the 10th seed ( Tom Perry) in the 1st pick, that should have given them first pick in the 2nd round, if i understand the rules correctly, so why did they then pick 21st seed ( Max Clegg ) , seems a strange decision to me. I just hope when they get round to announcing their 1-5 it's strong or else i can see the wooden spoon looming.

I pray they don't go for Graversen at reserve. I would have thought lesson's have been learnt from this season, were the failure to get a good reserve pairing probabaly cost us going into the play-offs.Looking at some of the reserves in the elite league last season like Lawson, Grajczonek & Auty, they are a different class to Graversen who is really no better than a premier league reserve, especially away from home were is record is pretty dismal.I think Doolan & Kauko would make a decent reserve pairing.Kauko finished last season with an elite league average of 4.62, not sure of Doolan's, so probabaly wouldn't use too many points up in any team building plans. But obviously until the points limit is annouced it makes it difficult to guess. I do fear they will use Graversen though as he is a Lions asset & it will be a cheaper option & to be fair to him he is loyal & a good team man, but he just isn't good enough for the elite league.

Have to agree with you tonight was dire, i think the meeting was only put on to appease season ticket holders after being left short-changed, the difference in standard of the riders was never going to mean close racing, i would have thought lessons would have been learnt from the freestyle debacle when riders of different standards competed against each other & the racing was also dire. Interesting what you say about season ticket discounts for next season, i bought mine at the early -bird price & don't see why doing that should stop me getting a discount on next seasons ticket. Maybe they should think about selling next seasons tickets just for league matches then they can work out a suitable discount because they know how many fixtures to base it on, rather than having to suffer grim end of season fixture fillers like tonight. The only consolation being it only took about 80 minutes for 16 heats.

To get the meeting on after all the rain of the previous week, topped off with the absolute deluge we had on the saturday evening, which must have left the track under water was a minor miracle, i think the majority of tracks would have postponed it on sunday morning without even attempting to prepare any type of surface, i think it's very harsh to criticise the lack of passing / excitement . Obviously with Glynn having to take 40 -50 tonnes of dirt off & then to put dry stuff down it left him very little time to prepare the surface how he probably would want to, given ideal weather. Under the very difficult circumstances i was just glad to see some speedway. I didn't think the racing was that bad, certainly no worse than the stuff i've watched on sky this season.

One rider i'd love to see in the Lions team next season is Nick Morris, who rides the track brilliantly every time he visits Leicester, but i imagine he figures heavily in Swindon's plans for next year. But i'd like the Lions promotion to try their best to try & secure his services for next year.

Yes it said national league level teams Leicester, Stoke, Kings Lynn & i think it said "hopefully Dudley".Which i presume is why it was moved to saturday has Stoke have a meeting on sunday.

When Glyn Taylor was interviewed before last sundays meeting he was asked about the sides for this weekend & said Coventry were going to be using Nicholls, Zengota & Harris, so don't know why the situation changed between sunday & the sides being officially announced on Tuesday, would have thought if there was a fixture clash for Harris that would have been known about before last sunday.

It would have been a farce if Lions had used there normal line-up, of course they have to strengthed up to make it competitive. Nobody wants to see a one-sided match & it will be great to see riders we don't normally get to see. I for one am certainly looking forward to it.

Like the look of that team, but i'd go for Henning Bager (5.21), instead of Jan Graversen. Jan scores decent amount at home , but his away scores are pretty poor. I think Bager could at least match Jan's scores at home & easily score more away than he does. But having said that i think Jan will be back because he's a Lions asset (i think) & that's the cheaper option.

The line up wasn't helped when the GB V AUS test match at Workington was rained off & then re-staged on the same day as the freestyle show this meant Kerr & Grajczonek who i think were both in the original line up pulled out to ride in the test match.

I have to agree the racing was gate & go, but if you listened to Glyn's interview before the meeting he said the rider's had requested that the dirt be bladed off completely because of the rain on friday & overnight, this meant they were riding on the base with no dirt left on the track & as Glyn said before hand it was very slick & quite dusty,so the riders obviously felt it was safer without the dirt & i suppose they are the ones risking life & limb so there thoughts must be taken into account, but it meant we saw speedway riding not racing.It was a great opportunity missed to introduce speedway to people who hadn't seen it before, because i would say the crowd was 2,500 ish, but with the quality of the racing i don't think many of the newcomers would return. It didn't help with having 4 qualifing heats involving the same 4 riders at the begining meaning each heat was taking so long because the riders needed to rest in between & then the main event only having 10 riders, meaning almost every heat was delayed because riders were having 2 rides on the trot, so it was very drawn out.I suppose the idea was right but would have been better with a 16 man event with riders of more even ability. Even the final was a bit of a farce with Ben Barker staying down on lap 2 when he could have easily got up, trying to force a re-run, because in a previous heat Andre Compton went down on the 2nd lap & the ref said the promoters instructions were to let all 4 back in, so with a precident set Barker thought he would stay down but this time the ref awarded the race after 2 laps.I didn't stay for the MX, but as i was leaving after the speedway had finished i heard 2 lads say " that's the boring bit finished now" , which i suppose about summed it up really, although by all accounts the MX didn't sound too thrilling.

On the Lions website it shows no fixture for next saturday, then MDL final on 28th & then says ADDITIONAL FIXTURES, MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW, so presumably we are going to see some challenge meetings. I suppose the promotion had to wait for our play-off fate to be confirmed before they could start arranging additional fixtures.

So the extra point the SCB awarded Redcar back in june, for that 46-47 win at Edinburgh turning a 3 point win into a 4 point win because Edinburgh infringed the R/R rules turned out to all important. So we've got Edinburgh to blame for us not reaching the play -offs .

At the time,back in June it probabaly didn't seem that important, but looking at the table now the decision by the BSPA to award Redcar 4 match points instead of 3 by altering the score of the Edinburgh v Redcar from 46-47 to a Redcar win by more than 6, because of a rule infringement by Edingburgh, could have a big say in the outcome of the play-off line up.Like you say it could well go down to race points as both sides will struggle to get anything from tough away trips, especially Leicester as they usually take a massive beating at Newcastle & the news that the in-form Magnus Karlsson will be missing with a back injury will not help ( Ricky Wells guests ).

Steve Worrall guests

Don't know of any road closures on A563 so you should be ok.Weather cloudy, but dry at the moment & is suppose to brighten up later .