The Cheese

Thursday 28th

Press conference will be live here from 1pm.

Interesting that several people here have Leicester as one of the favourites but bet365 have them at the same odds as Birmingham! Sheffield 6/4 Ipswich 7/2 Belle Vue 4/1 King's Lynn 13/2 Oxford 8/1 Birmingham 14/1 Leicester 14/1

I think it was postponed 2 or 3 times. Can't remember whether it eventually took place or not.

7 teams from 9 effectively given a bye into the next round yet the holders aren't one of them. Ridiculous.

Looks a good side. Taken the two weaker links out from last season and replaced them with better.

This situation seems to get more odd as time goes on, can't imagine how frustrating it is for Swindon fans knowing there's a perfectly good track and stadium there. Russell saying it wasn't financially viable made no sense. There was no attempt to sell the club, attract new investment or even lower the costs by dropping down to the Championship where at least they'd be guaranteed some big crowds against Oxford and Poole. It was just that's it, we're done. To then team up with Osborne to look for a new site makes it even stranger given his history and reputation, you wouldn't even consider that unless you're a complete mug which I don't think he is.

LINE-UP: 1 Luke Muff (Belle Vue), 2 Ben Trigger (Mildenhall), 3 Max Clegg (Edinburgh), 4 Connor Bailey (Workington), 5 Tom Woolley (Kent), 6 Jacob Clouting (Oxford), 7 Max Perry (Leicester), 8 Jamie Halder (Berwick), 9 Jacob Hook (Edinburgh), 10 Freddy Hodder (Belle Vue), 11 Danny Phillips (Berwick), 12 Ben Morley (Kent), 13 Lee Complin (Mildenhall), 14 Jody Scott (Oxford), 15 Ashton Boughen (Leicester), 16 Sam McGurk (Workington). Reserves: 17 Callum Foy, 18 Ben Rathbone. https://britishspeedway.co.uk/major-events/ndlrc-line-up-confirmed/

Well done to Glasgow, a great reward for the investment the owners have made since taking over. A second league title at this level for Harris, 23 years after his first!

Well done to Sheffield, felt as though they'd have to make a great start and that's what they got. Ipswich needed someone to back-up Emil and Doyle but nobody really managed to do that. It's a shame though that again you have the most important meeting of the season being rushed through in less than ideal conditions. Not sure what the forecast was but if that rain was expected then it would have made sense to postpone until next week.

I can see why so many saw Lambert's comments as whinging and would probably agree but I'd rather see a rider give their honest opinion than the same old "we're disappointed but we go again on Thursday" type interview. As a King's Lynn rider I'd expect him to be more annoyed at losing to Ipswich too. Assuming Doyle is okay you'd fancy Ipswich to win now but I wouldn't write Sheffield off just yet, Hume being a liability has just about kept them in it. King and Rew will be the key riders in the 2nd leg, not expecting the other 3 to add much so they'll need to back up the top 2.

https://www.fimspeedway.com/sgp/riders That's the list of permanent riders for this year, Becker's profile was also on that page earlier today but it's not there now.

Poor from Belle Vue but you have to give Ipswich credit, solid throughout the team last night and appear to be peaking at the right time. There's always plenty of jokes about Harris riding for everyone and understandably so, but there's a reason why he's the go to guest for everyone. Especially at this time of year when conditions are often not great and you can see that some don't fancy it. There's going to be a huge hole in British speedway when he eventually retires.

Good to see Doyle hasn't broken anything. Not usually one to criticise Tatum but his commentary was woeful yesterday. I don't think he realised all night that Hansen was promoted into the meeting to replace Zmarzlik. They could do with having someone who understands the rules, can count and has the statistics to feed them that information.

If anyone missed the meeting or wants to watch again, it's available on iPlayer for the next 25 days as it was shown on Welsh channel S4C. The programme didn't start until 5.30 but it looks like they show all races until they catch up live. Just search 'Grand Prix' and it should come up.