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Meetings between these two rarely disappoint and this was another cracker watched by a huge crowd with plenty of travelling support , from Ht1 that saw Doolan and Worrall passing and re-passing right up to Ht15 that saw a typically spectacular ride from Chris Harris there was value for money in every race. Big crowd, great racing, close score, value for money and a meeting done and dusted in good time, more of the same each week please, the speedway season has started.

Following the injury to Martin Vaculik on Thursday I’ve been looking for any official details of his injury I come on to the thread ( not very often these days due to the drivel that some spew out) to find out only to read 10 pages of Swindon bashing and the same sh**e over and over again,by the same offender Pretty sad really when your not even a Swindon supporter hey Facts are nobody forced them on to the track,accidents happen and that’s speedway just a shame that we’ve lost Martin Get well soon and look forward to the next time he’s on the bike Shirl

I want to see 2 evenly matched sides in most matches not NL rider to stand in for stupid rules

Lakeside's average crowd is probably a fair bit lower than it was 5or 6 years ago, but that is symptomatic of many clubs, these days. I put that down mainly to the disastrous way the sport has been mismanaged in recent years. I see the rule that stopped riders from getting off the bike to prepare the start has been dropped already, barely a month into th e season, the latest example of how Chapman & Co stagger from one crazy idea to the next. Ipswich are fortunate in that they are apparently one of the very few clubs whose attendances have gone against the trend, but many others were in dire financial crisis at the end of last season. One thing that hasn't been mentioned on the thread was timing. Parade was at 8.pm, first race a little before 8.15, last race finished 1hr 20 min later, so credit to the ref for keeping it moving, as last weeks ref did well, so credit where it's due. I think a lot of Lakeside's supporters stopped going and maybe got out of the speedway habit as a result of last years disatrous decision to drop to NL, not that the club had much choice at the time, but some work has to be done now to win the missing fans back.

Only reason Swindon won the league last year was because you got lucky in the final. And nearly made a complete mess of that as well!

Says someone whose home track is Blunsdon. You rarely see a good meeting at Swindon. Nearly always spaced out. Come down Wednesday and lets see how our newly laid track does.

Bet Gavan is getting excited, Kurtz v Morris

Max Fricke is going to be some rider, he's brilliant now, future world champion in my opinion

Probably yet another victory for the Robins down in deepest darkest Dorset. Poole 44-46 Swindon

The problem at Lakeside is that the spectators spread themselves out so much that even a decent crowd can look scanty. Certainly, compared to last season, it was a bumper crowd. The crunch will come when we have decent weather which always, at Lakeside at least, puts a lot on the gate.

Gavan a question for you, would you like Matt Ford as your promoter at Ipswich

And his home average this year?? Near unbeatable. RR won't cover him and weakens the Aces significantly home and away. You would have to know very little about speedway to to not see that.

The irony of this is unbelievable....Wasn’t you the one who said “i’ll Believe Hans over a riders Dad who was there” & now this....you can’t make this up.

Have to laugh at you. On Wednesday you stated Belle Vue would have won at Poole but for Cook and Worrall missing. Now Cook is back and r/r covers Worrall very well, Belle Vue are at home and Poole, with the same team, are going to win away by at least 10? The trouble is Gavan you can be read like an old book. This post was made for the sole purpose of coming on here on Monday night after the meeting to say how Poole choked against a “so called” weakened Belle Vue team. The Aces aren’t really weakened at home. Worrall can be covered easily with r/r. Etheridge is no loss at all. A rider from the Colts team could easily strengthen the Aces. If Poole win it will be hard won. We have a chance, yes, but Belle Vue are still favourites to win the meeting. They are a likely playoff team. You will have to do better than that.

Typical numpty comment from a no nothing.

Poole fan??? Definitely not a Poole fan!

So who has ultimate responsibility for speedway meetings? I'm presuming the referee by authority delegated to him/her from the ACU. Has to be someone in command, otherwise you get chaos with every Tom Dick and Harry trying to lay claim to being in authority. By all means the referee can listen and seek opinions, but they should be able to intervene with full authority and take charge when these situations exist, where so many variables are at play. I won't shift from my view this was caused, as most system failures are, by weak management and fully agree that it needs prompt investigation with Crystal clear directives.

796 tickets left for Motor - Start tomorrow, it will be a sell out again

There’s not an automatic right to all four back no - but standing on the second bend it was clear to see all four made a good start together it got nipped up and Bowtell from gate two made clear contact with haertel and haertel with Morley on the outside - both continued on trying to save it and subsequently fell of on their own but it was a clear case of first bend bunching and the ref denied the paying public of a speedway race with all four riders back in! Wouldn’t have made much difference to be result but just seemed a very harsh decision on the two young lads racing hard for the first corner!

When these situations happens, it should be essential that the BSPA learn from them and make amendments to address any issues that became evident. It is wrong to place the blame squarely on the Referee. Track conditions can change and riders opinions can as well. We need to have guidelines in place to react when these situations happen...

Championship shield, will be same teams as last night but question mark over Etheridge who seems to of picked up a hand injury, think this will be a very good close meeting and the best of it is... No rain forecast all day.

Don't think the outcome would have been any different if Bach/Klindt had been in instead of Jensen/Bewley; I was expecting a 1-5 in heat 13 from Wells/Riss which almost happened and there would probably have been a repeat or worse in 15 had Bach/Klindt been nominated. To be fair, Jensen was probably our best rider of the night and Bewley could do with any extra track time available.

Tracks should have a 2 minute clock on the centre green..Do what you like within the 2 mins. Note that don't mean 2 mins of doing the garden in nearly all cases.Most riders get up to the tapes with a minute or less on the clock.Well if there was one, that is..

Mate, any NEW track is far easier to maintain than an old one, you just have to keep on top of it. if you have a curator that knows his stuff it will not be a problem.

What do you really expect mate, we've had buckets of rain down here for weeks. Glyn did very well to get it turned over graded and packed to a racable state. He told me it was like a swamp in the morning when he came in. And you cannot put machinery on a sodden track otherwise you will do more damage than good, You will tear the track to shreads in the tyres. Glyn and Matt busted a gut to get that meeting on, way beyond the call of duty. Just think yourself lucky you saw some speedway, otherwise you would have had the hump after a 400 mile round trip..

But we still won it.

the last time you saw any decent racing at Swindon was when Darcy rode for you

Exactly what I was thinking, always a snoozefest at Blunsdon, at least our holes made it interesting last year

You get far better racing on a decent track at Swindon rather than one full of holes and bumps. I hope they have improved Poole as it needed it.

But that was on a decent track in Poland

Already ridden it and said it was excellent. Swindon lucky he is not back for Wednesday.

And this one

Chris Holder seems to have got his mojo back !!!!

Gavan isn't that bothered about Ipswich so I don't think he would mind.

To make it easy for you. I believe everyone that's not on Swindon's side.

I'd suggest current form is a better indicator, and he has been awesome at the NSS this season, whereas as good as Tungate can be round there he hasn't got going yet. No doubt whatsoever Worrall will be a big miss as he was the other night.

While waiting on the appeal to be heard. Seems those in charge just pick and choose when they are going to apply the rules.

On the whole Proctor situation, how can a rider be declared in a teams 1-7 even though he doesn’t have clearance to ride in the country and a guest be allowed to take his place.

Only if you announce another self imposed sabbatical

Well I was there on Thursday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was a little concerned with the fog on the Solent, but luckily it lifted inland. Young Ben was involved with some great scraps with Danny ayres, which provided great entertainment!

The rain was expected to stop early morning then Rob & his crew were hoping to prepare the track early afternoon for the evenings racing. Rob also has a job to do at his garage. When the crew were at the track, they found out that it was a losing battle to prepare the track. http://scunthorpescorpions.co/?p=8351

To confirm this Franz Heck of Berlin was indeed the rider who won at the Nürburgring in 1928. If he had been practising "dirt-track" in Berlin before making his debut at Hamburg-Lokstedt in that 1929 season, he can only have ridden on one of the Berlin horse trotting tracks at Mariendorf and Ruhleben (long-tracks of 1,000 and 1,200m length), which were used for motorcycle track racing at the time. In 1929 there was no shorter "dirt-track" speedway in Berlin. Such a track was eventually opened in Berlin in March of 1930, but was not a great success. It was a much smaller oval compared to Hamburg Lokstedt. The Berlin Dirt Track was only 333m long and was built inside the existing 400m cycle track at the Olympia-Radrennbahn in Plötzensee. Other tracks for dirt-track racing in those "boom" years of 1929 and 1930 in Germany were opened at Breslau, Munich, Stuttgart, Oberhausen, Cologne, and a number of other towns, but soon the novelty factor wore off, and most of these enterprises did not last very long. In fact , Oberhausen was the only pre-war track track that was still used (revived) for Speedway after WW2, and well into the 1960s.

Sure reserve switches are still allowed, could have cost Eastbourne the win. Not sure what happened regarding Kelsey's bike, couldn't understand why he didn't use someone's else bike in his scheduled 2nd ride and then came out late and missed the 2 mins in Ht8 on Marks bike, mistakes like that could have cost the Eagles the win. Devils unlucky with Cockle having a off night but overall a good meeting with Eastbourne deservingly just edging it. Edwards a fine young prospect.

The meeting v BV was an OK first meeting. The track alterations were good but the surface was simply too 'claggy' with all the rain, although it did get better as the evening went on. For Poole Kurtz looked the business with the others doing ok especially as the track dried out a bit (Woryna did comment beforehand that he wasn't happy with his bikes after the afternoon practice!). For BV Fricke was the clearly the star having his best performance (I think) at Wimborne Road. Ably supported by Bewley and Starke but without much support from the others (Batch and Tungate were dire!!) It may have been a little different if Cook and Worrall had ridden but then Starke and Fricke may not have scored as well. No real incidents requiring referee (Ronnie Allan) intervention - Batchelor sliding off on his own and getting off the track not even requiring a restart. Not the best meeting for a more than decent crowd but slickly presented and all done by half nine.

There's a 22 minute video on the Pirates Twitter and Facebook platforms showing interviews before the meeting with home and away riders plus the referee, followed by some action, interviews at the press conference which includes4 Poole riders, Middlo and Matt Ford.

No it’s usually better when the weather is better but with the amount of rain we’ve had, all the track curator can really do is get the track packed down hard so at least it didnt fall foul of the weather like so many others. The trouble is when it is packed down you pay the price with less grip. PersonallyI thought it was a better meeting last week but Awesome Lawson was, well, awesome. His sweep round the outside of bends 1&2 off gate 4 in heat 13 was quite exceptional, especially against a rider of Danny Kings quality. Gate 4 has a slight adverse camber and hardly anyone wins off of it in the big heats. Ippo’s problem was they had two riders who had never ridden the track before and just couldn’t get on with it. Good call by the ref in heat 8. There is no automatic right to all four back. One rider fell off on his own. The other hit the air fence and was not under power when the race was stopped.

And still they bite ..even when you tell people .

Jeez is all this bickering still going on.

My thoughts on stadium. PR should start at the beginning ie car park which in my opinion is good enough to use as a motocross track first sight of it is enough to put any nubies off. If you get past that although there are alterations inside stadium from when Len was there I wouldn't call them improvements. From where I sat in the stand on the home straight the view of the 2nd bend was slightly obscured and the mist and rain last night made matters worse. If you have mobility problems and usually watch from near the fence on the flat I think you may have trouble seeing the riders going down the back straight (especially if you have to sit in a chair/wheelchair). The seating that was under the referees box last year has been rebuilt with scaffolding and wooden steps which are definitely not user friendly for people with mobility problems. The ref is now in a porta cabin and hopefully can see all the track. Oh well perhaps thing's will look better when the weather improves, I will go again but am not impressed with "improvements" hopefully the team can make up for that.

Tried to post a couple of photos but the forum doesn’t seem to like the urls from the image hosting site I use. Here’s my waffle on the MotoX track copied from the Rye House fans page on Facebook : Ironic that after all the worries about views we lose a meeting (at least partly) due to visibility from mist. My experience was this, after getting to the track 75 minutes before tapes up and squeezing in to the very last spot at the front of the viewing platform next to the ref’s box I actually had an OK view. Though being 6’5” and getting a spot at the very highest viewing point in the stadium (with the possible exception of the last row of the bleachers on the second/third bend) certainly contributed significantly to that. However, I can’t see how everyone in the stadium can have had a satisfactory view without those advantages. I’m certainly concerned I won’t have one if I don’t manage to get a spot in the same place for future meetings (and there will, hopefully, be plenty of busier ones where good spots will be even more at a premium). I had hoped to try out a few other spots in later heats but obviously that became impossible. At the very best, the moto-cross track is a distraction from the racing, at worst I can see it being a real obstruction to viewing at points around the track. The concerted PR campaign about it from the track announcer (even dragging Scott Nicholls in to tow the company line) was an irritation too, albeit a minor one. I’m reserving final judgement until another meeting or two and see how things settle down (speaking of which, I wouldn’t be surprised if some work had been done to level off some of the bumps in the MotoX track since the original photos and videos were taken, which is a good move if so). A pity that we lost a meeting featuring some good, promising racing - Leicester’s much hyped new stars seemed ill at ease on our track and our riders seemed to be coming together well before conditions got too treacherous.