Chris116

My biggest wish with Smallbrook stadium is that they could have a pathway to Smallbrook station so we could catch the train that links with the ferry. It would make the journey much less of a worry as last time I attended I nearly missed the ferry due to the first taxi being full and the second one not arriving for some time.

I went to my first speedway meeting, aged 3 months, at Rye House in 1954. My parents moved to Southfields in 1957 and we started going to Wimbledon within a few weeks. During the next few of decades we went to meetings at New Cross, Hackney, Wembley, White City, Reading, Coventry, Cradley Heath, Oxford and Crayford. We also went to a similar number of Stock Car tracks and enjoyed both sports equally. As tracks in London closed I spent time living in Basildon and Skegness and saw racing at Arena Essex, Peterborough, Kings Lynn and Skegness. Now I am back living near Wimbledon and sadly went to most of the last season of car racing there. I no longer drive a car and this restricts me to Rye House for Speedway, Aldershot for Stock Cars and a few other meetings when I can get a lift from a friend. As I am a railway enthusiast I volunteer as a guard on the Mid Hants railway which means I can not attend Saturday meetings so I have been pleased they have been racing midweek meetings recently. I just hope they keep to midweek dates next year so I can continue watching some great racing.

So you have the problem of not really wanting them to race mid week while I cannot see more than a very few Saturday meetings! Looks like whatever happens one of us will be missing next season which is sad.

You can add Grimley to the list of stock car tracks. It was nearly lost last winter due to planning problems but they started racing again once the problem was solved.

I agree with those who say it is nonsense that they have to have an interval but until management say they have stopped having an interval and aim to complete meetings by 9.20pm. I will not be risking missing the last race. I fully understand that a crash can delay things, that is outside anybody's control but the love of intervals is something I can do without.

i have been having a look through the rules and can find nothing on the subject of the promotion/relegation matches between the top of the Championship and the bottom of the Premiership. If the meetings were held now then Leicester would be the Premiership team involved and on the basis that one of the top two would be expected to win the Championship then either Ipswich or Sheffield would be looking for promotion. My question is that two of Leicester's riders also race for Sheffield and two also race for Ipswich. Were can you find out what the rule is for which team would get to use these riders and surely having them racing for one team and not the other makes a total mockery of the whole idea? We could land up with the situation where a guest rider was the main reason a team went up or down!

I live near Wimbledon and used to enjoy going to Poole and Rye House but sadly Poole insist on having an interval which meant last season I missed the last race in order to catch the 9.52pm train. That was with a 7.30pm start time and allowing 10 minutes to get from the stadium to the station. When I spoke to two officials I was told they had to have an interval because the track staff had to have a break which in my opinion is ridiculous. Two hours and ten minutes to fail to complete a meeting without any injury delays has meant I have only seen racing at Rye House this season. I just hope they go to all midweek meetings next season as I am busy on a Saturday.

If this meeting is not run before the cutoff date and that is the cause of Rye House not getting into the playoffs then it will be my last season of watching a sport I have followed since 1957. All season there have been massive gaps in the fixture list for all teams and with the cutoff date nearing all of a sudden it is a surprise that they need to run the meetings. Just as the GRA are the biggest menace to stadiums around the country so the BSPA is the biggest threat to speedway. Very upset that things should come to this. They need to either run it next Wednesday or extend the cut off so the match still counts. If Rye House fail to score the points fair enough but if they are not given the chance I feel that the BSPA are a fraud.

I agree with that as his sudden improvement is down to who he is riding for.

Forgive me but KK scored 11+1 for Rye House at Poole earlier this month so he can't dislike the track that much!

Sadly I travel by train and the last train from Kings Lynn to Liverpool Street is at 10.30pm which makes going to a doubleheader pointless. Not happy!

They are at every meeting at Rye House. For those who missed tonights meeting and to see what you have missed then Tuesday and Friday this week plus Monday next week give you plenty of chances to enjoy the errr.... racing!

Poole and Kings Lynn web sites and BSPA web site say that Poole are racing at Kings Lynn on 31st. Only the Rye House web site says they are at Kings Lynn that day! Going to be interesting to see what happens! If it is a double header I can see both aways sides wanting to be in the second match given how KL folded up in the last double header they staged! The fact that the 4th place in the league could depend on the results that night makes for uncomfortable thoughts of who is fixing what for whom!

I am sorry to say that you have hit the jackpot with that answer.

There is a simple reason why they would like the idea. It means an extra meeting that should be profitable!

As I asked the original question I take exception to being called thick and to be told it is an inane question. I know there are rules that cover where a rider races when there are clashing meetings but did not know if these would be what applied in the case of a promotion/relegation match. Having seen the childish way people treat each other here I will not bother asking any further questions as this forum is making me question my following a sport I have watched for sixty years. Note to admin/mods - Please either moderate the post I am replying to or remove my account as I am now in a very bad temper.

Promoters are on a hiding to nothing. The fans want to have a winning team but when White City won the league and every home match by a cricket score the fans stayed away because the racing was boring (having been to most of the meetings I can say it was VERY boring, to the point that I used to keep the score of red and Yellow against Blue and White in the hope that it might be a close score!). Winning the league shut White City. A few years later and Arena Essex opened and as I was at that time living in Basildon and worked for Chick Woodroffe on the Stock Car promotion I asked for a job that meant I could watch the racing and so spent the season controlling entry to the hospitality suite where the riders partners could enjoy the racing from. Every match was close but Hammers lost more than they won and the fans were unhappy with a team that lost. Personally I thought it was great as the racing was close and the tension in the last two or three heats when it was possible for either side to win was just how I like my racing.

I was not looking for a problem, just trying to find out how it was going to work as I could not find any reference to what would happen.

If the matches are not run before the cut off date due to a team being difficult about dates and it turns out that those matches would have altered who was in the top four then the team who caused the delay are guilty of wrecking the end of season for another set of fans. In my book that team should suffer a heavy penalty for such a situation.

I went to Rye House aged two months in 1954 and my parents moved to near Wimbledon in 1957. From then on I went racing most weeks at Wimbledon as well as White City while that was running. After to moving to Basildon I was then was a regular at Arena Essex until I moved to Skegness and saw most of the meetings there. I now live back near Wimbledon and my local team is Rye House. During my lifetime I have seen league racing in London at Wimbledon, New Cross, Wembley, White City, Romford and Hackney with Crayford, Arena Essex and Rye House just outside London. The last two named are the only tracks that are still in existance which means that the capital does not have racing in the capital which never helps a sport. The idea of going back to 13 heat league matches has been mentioned but remembering back to when that was what we had, there used to be a lot of fans who would go home after the league match and were not interested in the second half! It was the fact that many fans did not like second halves that brought in the extended league matches which are now 15 heats. Rye House regularly have six races for juniors on 150cc and 250cc machines in the half hour before the league match and talking to many people they are just not interested in watching those races although I always do and through watching them also went to one of the Junior Championship meetings at Rye House which I enjoyed. The most farcical thing that has happened so far this season is the exchange of Ed Kennett and Krzysztof Kasprzak between Poole and Rye House and that Ed Kennett rode as a guest for Swindon at Rye House a couple of weeks after being sacked by Rye House and proceeded to beat most of the Rye House team! Both riders have had their ups and downs this season but since moving have shown they can do well so maybe their lack of form was down to the two promotions more than being down to the riders! Promoting is a very hard balancing act. Fans want a winning team but having a team that won too easily closed White City! Fans want to see the top riders and do not support National League teams at tracks that also have a Premiership or Championship team. Riders used to have jobs and rode speedway as a sideline but that was when employers were willing for them to do that. Most employers would not let people go off racing speedway when they wanted them at work and would be even less happy when the rider suffered an injury and had to be off work for a time! The new air fences are wonderful things and I fully support all the other improvements in rider safety but I have noticed that riders with all the extra safety gear are far more willing to go for gaps that 40 years ago the top men would have never tried to get through. One of the biggest problems British Speedway has is that riders can make more money in other countries and the leagues in those countries can therefore hold the riders to ransom. Stopping doubling up or down will not solve that problem and until it is solved we in this county are left with what we have. Do I have any quick fix answers? No. Do I still enjoy watching racing? Yes.