Piotr Pyszny

I'm not sure laughably shambolic speedway - its days surely numbered in Britain - is in any position to poke fun at other sports. Last time I was at Derwent Park to watch speedway, a perfect summer evening in 2017, the crowd numbered about 450 - and that included a hundred or so following the visitors, Glasgow. There was barely a single genuine pass in the entire meeting. Absolute rubbish, frankly. On four subsequent occasions I was over in Cumbria for long weekends, Comets didn't even have a match to watch! I note, despite Workington FC's desperate struggles this season, recent crowds at Borough Park have been 504, 476 and 379 (they're official attendances, by the way; I'm guessing speedway is too embarrassed to reveal how many punters pass through its turnstiles). Is level eight football, I wonder, more appealing than level two speedway? I was told last week (by a source close to Workington FC) Derwent Park has been earmarked as a site for nuclear industry support facilities. Once Reds and Town depart for the shiny new stadium, and a much brighter future, the bulldozers will move in to Derwent Park and raze the place. Isn't the vandalized dump that is the Northside training track sufficient to accommodate what little interest in speedway survives in Workington?

The Rugby Football League is having talks with Matchroom at present, as Eddie Hearn confirmed in a TV interview during the recent snooker event in York. Hearn described rugby league in Britain as "on its knees". So, not in quite the same parlous state as speedway, which, as far as I can tell, is merely waiting for permission for the life support machine to be switched off. Leyton Orient are top of the National League. In all likelihood, heading back to the Football League.

Followers of all sports - not just speedway - have an interest in what participants earn because, to a greater or lesser degree, their admission fee helps cover the wage bill. It's hardly the same in less extraordinary walks of life.

Someone trails all the way from Birmingham to Buxton, for the express purpose of watching a speedway meeting. That meeting is called off in farcical circumstances. Not the slightest demur. Sole reaction: well, I enjoyed the trip and the scenery. Sorry, still baffled. To Jayne (presumably Moss): how do we go about getting a full refund? Can you give me an address to which we can post our readmission and trackside parking tickets?

You enjoyed the trip and the scenery? Good God. If you're an example of the tiny remnant of speedway's extant fan base, no wonder the sport's clubs get away with treating their few remaining customers so badly. You're either pathologically supine or a sandwich short of a picnic. I wouldn't care to hazard which.

Called off 25 minutes after the scheduled start time. Why wasn't a decision about the condition of the track taken an hour or two before tapes up, certainly before spectators were allowed to enter the (so-called) stadium? I haven't been a speedway regular for more than a decade but, holidaying near Buxton this week, decided to go this afternoon, along with my wife. Thanks, Buxton, for conning us out of £28.50 of admission fees, plus a fiver on programmes. We don't live anywhere near Buxton, so to us readmission tickets are absolutely useless. Today's farce merely confirmed the conclusion I reached circa 2005: speedway is a joke sport, deservedly dying on its backside. What a way to treat your steadily shrinking band of customers! Unsurprisingly, this sort of thing never happens when I watch my other favourite sports: football and rugby league. But then football and rugby league aren't from the Mickey Mouse end of the sporting spectrum.

In Monyash, about eight miles southeast of Buxton, it's cloudy but fairly bright. Heavy rain for a time this morning. Further showers look likely, to be honest.

Rugby is one sport, with one set of supporters? That's news to me. There is rugby league and rugby union. No such sport as 'rugby'. Speedway has plenty of history sharing stadia either owned or used by rugby league clubs (eg Bradford Northern (Bulls), Hull FC, Hull Kingston Rovers, Rochdale Hornets, Workington Town). And football (Barrow, Fleetwood Town, Halifax Town, Hastings Town, Leith Athletic, Nelson, Newport County, Newtongrange Star, Queen's Park, St Mirren). Is the County Ground, Exeter, the only example of speedway sharing facilities with a rugby union club? EDIT: to answer my own question: didn't Peterborough Lions RUFC share the East of England Showground for a couple of years?

I was a regular (although never at the same time) at Cleveland Park, Odsal and The Shay. The racing at CP was way better than anything seen at the other two. Remember how the likes of Steve Wilcock could pass opponents, on both the outside and the inside - often during a single race?! Yet Middlesbrough, in their latter years, struggled to attract more than 850 spectators. What does that say? Fast forward two decades, and I bet the promotion at Redcar would kill for 850 spectators every week. It was only when I moved to Exeter that I witnessed consistently processional racing. Many miss the County Ground, I know, but I found that once one became accustomed to how fast the riders went at the track (compared to everywhere else), that was it. There was no other interest. Whilst down there, I 'picked' my meetings very carefully!

Shouty Pearson is a dreadful commentator (as he was a dreadful centre green presenter), but he is one of very few journalists (actually, he probably isn't a qualified journalist) who appear to care about speedway. See where you're coming from, but the likes of former Middlesbrough promoters Ken Knott and Malcolm Wright always wore blazers and ties on race nights. It presented a professional image.

Very sad news indeed. I particularly associate Dave with running the track shop at Cleveland Park, Middlesbrough. Buxton, too. Always happy to chat, before and after meetings. Always full of energy. I later discovered we had another mutual interest: visiting football grounds, and subsequently bumped into him on a fair few of those. One of the nice guys. RIP, Dave.

Run a story like this and one should always give the other party an opportunity to comment. In the same piece - not, at best, a week later. It's 'first day on the job as a journalist' stuff. Makes Speedway Star look and sound like something put together by sixth formers. If Peter Collins really does think a hundred of his mates should get into Belle Vue for nothing, he's seriously lost the plot.

I guess Ivan would have raised much more if the sale had been at a time when speedway was actually popular. Must be a comparatively small pool of buyers nowadays.

Any relation to Dario Franchitti, the Edinburgh-born racing driver, now retired?

Another that sticks out in the memory: I was holidaying in south Wales (as you do) in spring 2002, and drove over to Carmarthen to watch the Dragons' opening meeting (versus King's Lynn's juniors) at the Showground. Big crowd on, and the track wasn't fit for racing. It simply wasn't ready. Nobody could get the bikes sideways on the turns. I watched the meeting in the company of a Newport regular, who described it as a travesty of speedway. Can't imagine any first-timer would have seen much point in returning. Did Carmarthen end their chances, there and then, of making a success of staging speedway in south-west Wales? The opening meeting at the South Tees Motorsport Park, Redcar versus Sheffield, in 2006, wasn't much better - for the same reasons. Track unfit for racing. And first impressions count, don't they?

I was at that meeting. Don't recall it being abandoned. I do remember the riders coming back to the pits after the first heat. They were covered, head to foot, in slurry. Typified the shambolic organisation of that Glasgow-at-Workington season. Hard to believe the Tigers re-emerged at Shawfield, a few months later, with huge crowds and professional presentation. Some of the Derwent Park crowds struggled to reach 350, partly because Glasgow had such a poor team (only Boston, also kicked out of the league, were worse), partly because the track/racing was a joke and partly because Glaswegians didn't want to trek down to Workington while west Cumbrians couldn't see the point of watching somebody else's side. EDIT: I'm going to stick my neck out and say the 'slurry' meeting was on the August Bank Holiday Monday (31st) afternoon against Middlesbrough. It was baking hot. The Bears won 53-23. Just dug out the programme. Promoter Dave Thomson clearly feared the worst when he wrote, in his Tiger Talk programme notes: "I would be surprised if we get through today without one or two hiccups behind the scenes as most of our regular track staff and officials are not with us." Explains the water/slurry fiasco. I seem to remember Glasgow skipper Steve Lawson later described the afternoon as the worst experience of his speedway career.

Trailing down to the East Midlands from Teesside to report on a Long Eaton v Middlesbrough match in the (I think) 1995 season. Glorious summer evening, not a cloud in the sky, yet the meeting was called off. When I queried the ref's decision, he took me out on the track. It was like a ploughed field! Too dangerous for push bikes, let alone speedway bikes, was his summation. Similarly frustrating, a few seasons earlier, was watching an hour of tractor racing at Odsal before the referee gave up and called off a Bradford versus Poole match. Crowd in the stadium, not a wheel turned. Almost every meeting Glasgow staged at Derwent Park during their 1987 'season in exile'. I was living in Cumbria at the time, and went to most of the matches. The track - bumpy, rutted and dusty - was a disgrace. Nobody did any work on it between matches. In the end, after one pile-up and/or visitors' complaint too many, Glasgow (or, as they became, Workington Tigers) were kicked out of the league, halfway through the season. One of the worst crashes involved Troy Butler, of Milton Keynes. Left him with a gash in the neck, I recall.

It's neither! It's a halfway house. Same size as Berwick's programme this season.

Out of interest: is its format A5 (user-friendly, and how the programme was when I last attended the Fours at Peterborough) or A4 (unwieldy and hard to store)?

Got talking to a Derwent Park regular, who voiced serious doubts about the Comets' ability to run in 2018. With crowds this low, it's no surprise. One division next year?

Just back from this. Pretty well organised by Pickering & District Motor Club, who, mindful of forecast showers, kept a 34-race schedule ticking along at a fair lick. Some decent racing on a big, flat track at Riseborough, south-west of Pickering and very much in the middle of nowhere. Access via single-track back roads north of Castle Howard, through a muddy farmyard then down a bumpy lane. Class winners were Tom Cossar and Wayne Rickards (1000cc sidecars), Jamie Rodgers (500cc solos) and David Knowles (250cc solos). Didn't note who won the motocross class which, frankly, was pants. Admission was £10, a 16-page programme sold for £2 and the attendance I estimated at about 400. No problems with dust and the track held up very well.

Attended this as a neutral. A friend came along. He hadn't watched speedway since Belle Vue in the Seventies. I haven't been a regular - anywhere - for a decade. Both enjoyed it. Two things I found extremely irritating: riders' constant efforts to cheat at the gate, resulting in several re-runs, and the referee allowing same to spend ages 'gardening' before getting them under orders. A shock to see such a sparse crowd. About 550? Included maybe a hundred from Glasgow. By my reckoning, since reopening in the late Nineties, Workington have somehow managed to slash their attendances from 4,500 to 450. Now tell me British speedway isn't dying on its arse.

Thanks for the link.

I'm afraid the sporting world - and sports journalists - doesn't even notice speedway.

Can anybody give me an idea of the classes and/or leading riders for Sunday's (30/7) British Masters Qualifier grasstrack at Riseborough? I did email Pickering & District Motor Club, the organisers, for details, but they haven't bothered replying. The poster, on the club's Facebook page, advertising the meeting doesn't even say what time practice/racing begins! Please don't advise looking in Speedway Star. I haven't bought it in years, and it won't be available within 50 miles of where I live.