iainb

If you'd tuned into Sports Day on the BBC News channel at 6:30 yesterday you would have seen a report on the World Coal Carrying Championships being held earlier in the day... and no, sadly it was no April Fool

I expect him to come out and face the fans and or press, like he does when we win, and explain what he thought went wrong and why and what the prospects are for the 2nd leg, just like a team manager would in any other sport. For you to accept silence is a pretty blinkered and naive view, obviously he can do no wrong in your eyes and doesn't need to answer to anybody. Another year goes by without any sort of cup run!

It's easy to come out and take the plaudits when you've won but you earn your coin commenting on losses. No quotes from him on the website either. Is there any other sport where team managers get an easier ride?

The captain and the manager missing from the face the fans session after the meeting!

Thought "smiler" Hawkins had thrown us a bone there putting Rew in 14, turned out to be an inspired move... At least we're not Birmingham

Looks like we'll be concentrating on just missing out on the play offs again this year

Is the non use of the automated start system a knock out cup thing or a tonight at Leicester thing?

But it'll be free

Day time meetings at the NSS are not normally the best anyway, was coming up for this from Leicester, but after attending the fiasco at the real HQ of Speedway, Scunny, on Good Friday I shall not bother with this.

Forecast seems to have improved markedly, may cop an afternoon shower though

Sadly, at the moment, Monday looks like a wash out

They were actually giving cash refunds last night, I've only ever seen that once before when there was nearly a riot at Oxford about about 40 odd years ago, ironically that was also a Good Friday!

It's always a shambles at Scunny or seems to be whenever I choose to go, being brought up on the era of around 10 matches to choose to go to on a Good Friday this year I had a choice of 2! Poole too far away as a neutral with a 7:30 kick off or the 80 mile trip to the omnishambles that is Scunny. In recent years it seems to be the track I've spent the most time at waiting for Speedway to actually happen, usually I've been kept waiting due to inadequate medical resources. There's no way Rob Godfrey should be anywhere near the top table of British Speedway, he should step back and look at getting his own club in order. At the risk of sounding like a Tory... Where is the plan? There's no plan! Like you say it's not the first time this has happened... anywhere! And it will happen again, we know what our climate is like and it'll probably only get worse before it gets better. A stadium full of punters, who were happily let in to be greeted by the sight of a track that everybody knew, deep down , was never going to see any Speedway ridden on it that night. There should be a set of procedures to work through, that have been proven to work, if a meeting is going to be attempted to be saved. Credit to those that tried to get the circuit into some kind of condition and clearing the pools of water on it but even after that work was carried out nothing was done to soak up the water that wasn't standing in pools but still quite clearly visible. I wonder if any research has been done into finding a financially viable absorbent substance that could be used on tracks in such events. Back in the day it used to be sawdust but the sport probably can't even afford that anymore. Blading the track and relaying with fresh shale would have been another option, just getting on with it may have been another option... or just calling it off after the downpour. That's my point there doesn't seem to be a set of procedures to run to in the event of this happening, it's generally nothing happens for a while, then riders start appearing, kicking the track, then work starts, the the ref, captains and managers walk a lap of the circuit, then there's more faffing about, everybody disappears for a while, then the ref, captains and managers appear again to walk another lap of the track, everybody disappears again, punters are stood around waiting, those who know, know and have already gone home... eventually it's called off... we've all seen it at our local tracks before and we'll all see it again! Added with that on this occasion was the ridiculous "music" being blasted at the elderly crowd, not a single update as to what was actually happening, an annoying loud humming noise emanating from the PA when the "music" did cease and even more ridiculously a large queue to actually get out of the stadium!

Absolutely spot on! Not only is he the promoter part of the BSPA, he runs the whole 5h1t show, is it any wonder the sport is in the state it's in? There should be some kind of time window in place to run meetings, much like they have in F1, to stop all of the faffing and dithering. It's the same today as it was 40 odd years ago when I first started attending.

Well, I'm glad the streamers were being kept up to date with proceedings because there was precious little being said in the stadium to the fans. All I heard was an announcement that it wouldn't be starting at 5:30 and then a load of horns blasting over the PA... what happened to the TV themes of the 80's?

Off!

They have... but there surely comes a point where you've got to stop faffing about and get on with it or call it off, especially with another black cloud bearing down on the stadium.

Track has had water pumped off of it after a heavy shower... can't help but think the next shower isn't too far away though

I was thinking the same... they'll keep 'til next year

My prediction is that Buster will be relaying the track at about 7pm

Who's investigating, "the weasel"?

You only hand to watch drive to survive to see that they are very different characters "behind the scenes".

Did Uncle Bob Dugard know this?

I didn't say it was brilliant racing, it was a pretty run of the mill meeting, the scores were close throughout the night which kept it interesting. You could argue that having 1 dominant gate, gate 4 is pretty fair as both teams will have it an equal amount of times throughout the night. What I am saying is don't point the finger at the track all of the time, Tarasenko proved there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. There were no dodgy patches, ruts, holes etc. Nobody was particularly getting into trouble with it, why blame the track?

You're doing a pretty good job of burying it yourself, having not seen it and just going on an anecdotal post on here!