You can count the number of riders that have been good enough to be truly competitive at the top level from entry on your fingers so that argument is a little flawed Once they are of the required standard if they had to pick one over the other the choice would be near unanimous for the higher level

Will he get a driving licence......?

Doubling down is what the top league riders want as it enhances their wages. You could also argue riders like Zach Cook are doubling up as they rode at Championship level before they rode at Premiership level.

Chris Louis would have been one of those at the top of the pecking order and he was most certainly not accommodated with  "the rest compromising". Speedway works in the UK the way it does because the majority of promoters want it too be run the way it is.  Can't beat a bit of democracy eh?

The second division use to be made up of youngest working their way through the sport. Double upping has been around for decades but it’s the double downing that started our current rider shortage. Second division clubs won’t even participate in the RS system but are more than happy to have top league riders on the cheap as it enhances their product. Doesn’t help the sport as a whole but “I’m alright Jack”, the mantra of most if not all second tier clubs. 

Yes Ray was doing mostly second half's when I was going the stand outs were himself, Sean Wilson and Andy Phillips who was at Wolves. Martin Rogers heart was in the right place and he always tried to promote the team I can only assume he had a shoestring budget that's why it all looked so good when Simmo and Bill Barker took over we on paper had a powerhouse team of Lynn specialists there must have been 3k-4k at the first home meeting and I think it was us and Bradford who had the financial backing of the Ham brothers who were favourites. Six months later all the Lynn specialists other than Lance King who had a couple of bad knocks looked dire Bo Peterson went from unbeatable round Lynn to awful. I loved it when Bill was in charge he used to wander round selling raffle tickets and you could always nab him for a catch up and things did look promising for a while when we had Loram and Henka and the odd glimpse of the old Mike Lee.