Time To Start Thinking Before Its Too Late

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Exeter, Hull, Newcastle, Berwick, Glasgow, Isle of Wight and probably one or two more too, all in danger of dropping out of the Premier League due to cost or other reasons, add in Kings Lynn (going Elite?), along with maybe Sheffield and Reading and the premier League's future looks gloomy.

Although with Birmingham and Middlesbrough added in it softens the blow slightly.

 

The Elite continues to feather it's own nest whilst the others fight for survival

So what is the Answer?

 

Will standards be lowered even further, with these or some of these dropping to the Conference making that a better league and then renaming it to Premier? thus linking up with Weymouth, Mildenhall and maybe Wimbledon?

 

Clearly dropping the averages will cut cost, but it will also cut class too, but eventually, as these riders who are bought in progress and become number 1's they will want more to meet their cost and demands and then we will be back to sqaure one.

 

Maybe Arena will move into Plough lane and Arena drop down? who knows, but the time to start thinking is now, our sport isn't as rosey as some like to think.

And then the likes of Buxton, Sittingbourne, Amadale being a training league?

 

Should teams be limited to only 2 non-uk riders?

 

Should we not have GP riders in the league as clearly it is being affected by riders, not being available, hence Oxford v Eastbourne , no Greg or Nicki (but same price to go in!!)

 

Lets have you views, sensible ones please.

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I've been trying to compose a sensible answer to this one (with respect to PL running costs) for while now, and can't really get past the following...

 

Shorten the PL season.

 

Whilst we can't be 100% sure of this, everything I've seen points to "gammy weather means smaller crowds". Lets face it, March isn't exactly the nicest time to be outside, and it's not the most reliable time of year to run meetings...and rain-offs cost money. Why start the "proper" season in March? It really does strike me as pointless. Sure, there's nothing wrong with a few challenge matches, open meetings and Things of that Ilk at that time, but only where the promotions in question have got their financial sums right.

 

For my money, the PT also needs looking at. I find it somewhat odd that a competition should be run that creates so many "dead rubber" fixtures right at the start of the season. By my reckoning, a good 30% of PT group stage fixtures are little more than an opportunity for riders to pick up injuries before the main event of the PL itself. I can't be bothered to work it out (and don't have the information anyway...) but there're certainly a few teams out there each year who have their league compaign scuppered before the start thanks to injuries in the PT group stages. Okay, there's little we can do to stop teams loosing "star" riders early in the season, but it always seems odd to me that they should be lost during a Mickey Mouse warm-up event.

 

T2T, I'd *love* to see restrictions on foreign riders in the PL. There are far too many foreign never-will-bes there at the moment, and this hurts both the chances of young Brits, and the pockets of promoters. The problem is EU employment law prevents this (I think...). Maybe a meaty average reduction for British riders could be introduced somehow?

 

With regard to removing GP riders from the EL, I think that would be a serious backward step. I can't think of any other sports where you can see such a high percentage of the best competitors in the world competing week in, week out in this country. The GP riders provide Sky with a link between GP events and their league coverage, which is definately a positive step as far as promoting the sport to those who aren't already into speedway. The other danger with a GP rider ban is the loss of rider income - I wouldn't be at all surprised if GP places were rejected by some riders in favour of EL rides in much the same way as some riders spurn the EL in favour of a much more predictable income in the PL. Personally I consider the GP series to be one of the big successes of the modern era, and would hate to see it undermined by the "pricing out" of riders.