Leaderboard

Having been to every home and away meeting bar one this year I would say be careful what you wish for. Roy is by far one of the best centre green announcers, in my opinion, in the country. Having had to listen to some of the drivel at other tracks, or lack of it, when things go wrong, at least he tries to keep folks entertained when there are unexpected and unavoidable delays. And he's respectful of the opposition. maybe if you turned up at 10:00 on a sunday morning you would see what the "hangers on and freeloaders" get up to prior to the meeting starting. Most, if not all, have put in an 8 hour shift (for nothing except free entry) before you turn up. I don't suppose you would work 8 hours on a sunday for £17:00. And i know for a fact that some have season tickets.

Don't forget to turn up on the 10th of November for winter track work storing away kickboards airfence etc.. from 10am until late afternoon.. bring warm clothes and waterproofs and join the team as we need a lot more VOLUNTEERS,, for the pathetic jobs as you mentioned.. please note if the pathetic jobs .never got done you could always go 60 miles north or 45 miles south to Berwick/Redcar for your speedway fix

On BBC Tees today Jitendra said he hoped to be in a position to have the full line up sorted within a week of the AGM.

So you know what dangleys taste like?---Hmmm

I get the very distinct impression from the posts on this thread that there is an anti Roy Clarke sentiment amongst certain Newcastle supporters. Maybe they know something I'm not privy to, but as a regular at Brough Park over many years, I have to say that in my view he does an admirable job. He certainly stepped up at short notice when Andrew Dalby took time out and had the guts to go out there and do the job. He might not be everyone's cup of tea, but so far as I'm concerned he is doing an excellent job as part of the promotion team even if you dislike his nicknames and banter etc'. I don't for one moment think that there is a dearth of would be centre green speedway promoters, but if there are supporters with aspirations to do the job, maybe they should step forward and offer their services?

If you're looking to add things to the night to entice families to attend etc the cost spread amongst your whole crowd could be very minimal. Working on a crowd of say 1000. Band or DJ to play throughout interval and in bar after meeting - £250 Free Bouncy Castle for Kids - £100 Beat the Starter - Fastest Time of the Night wins £50 mounted on a home team riders 2nd bike which kids and fans get the chance to sit on. A4 Colouring in Stencil of Rider to give out free to kids - Say 300 at 10p each - £30 Free Draw to watch a race from centre green based on ticket number - FREE Photo & Autograph Session with 1 x Home Team Rider per meeting before meeting - FREE Sweets for home team to throw out to crowd on parade - £50 Then just add anything that money can't buy in relation to fans mingling with their heroes. Just the above would offer better value for money, everyone loves something that appears to be free. Cost of the above £480 divided by 1000 fans = 48 pence. It's not exactly rocket science is it ?!?!?!?

Who gets priority on any clashes? And will the other team be allowed a guest curator or will they need to run CR (curator replacement)? Presume if they are allowed a guest curator the replacement will be allowed to do up to 5% more laps of the track grading and watering than the curator he is replacing?..

They'll have to have plastic bottles next time, if there ever is one A bet the stadium owners would have went mental over it, they twist on about bits of shale.

Fair point, costs nothing to be tidy and respectful - put it down to over exuberance and not being too familiar with cup winning protocol

The whole lot of them should've been fined for leaving their cheap prosecco bottles lying around on the dog track, all 7 of them!!!

Halifax 40 miles from BV not a chance 25 to 30 at best. Edit: just Google mapped it 38 miles, so my apologies

So much for CVS, and all those telling silly "I heard" tales.... business as usual!

So Berwick have confirmed they’ll be staying Championship next season and that Jye Etheridge & Leon Flint will be returning next season too. Good news for all Berwick fans.

Sums up the state of our beloved sport when a good topic has been taken over by a debate on chocolate !!!!

Don't forget to mention the free hot drinks and bicky's

I’m another Roy Clarke supporter. There are far, far worse out there.

Leave him alone; he's on a "roll". You don't "knead" to ridicule him, he just wants a "slice" of the action.

Cadburys has not tasted the same since the sell off to Mondelez who changed the ingredients. Just tastes of slimy cheap and nasty palm oil these days. That's progress for you

Sign riders like Bech? Riders who were never world class to begin with and are now on a downward spiral and wish to use the UK to top up the banks as the big boys don’t want them anymore ?

Where does the money come from to attract this sort of team? Attendances overall are probably down, that is not because of a lack of world class riders, maybe a small % is but you would need to quadruple attendance to generate a gate to even consider having 2 world class riders in the same team never mind 6 Poland didn't grow through promoting the sport and offering value for money in terms of ticket pricing They grew from local government backing, tv backing, a shed load of sponsorship, in fact polish speedway could give tickets to fans for free and survive healthily... No TV company will give British speedway the money to compete with Poland, they had that before and failed to utilise it. The next 5 years is all about watering it down as much as possibly year-on-year offering the opportunity for younger riders to progress through the divisions and hopefully after 5 years we have a batch of 16-23 yr old riders who are making up 50% of most teams.

Barry told me that he sent a big preview for Saturday's Chronicle and they butchered it and left about 20% of what he actually sent. The preview I did for the Sunday Sun, was published and left intact, though I didn't look to see if Saturday's Journal included my preview.

The majority will end up in the bank accounts of riders and tuners like the Sky money did.

Youngsters now either want to sit behind a games console all evening whilst messaging their friends on their smart phones , or go out and drink a shed load of booze. Speedway is not a cool sport anymore and probably never will be. You only have to see the crowd zoom ins whenever there is a live match. The average speedway fan in the UK must be about 50 at least surely.

Track curators now doubling up

In addition to our National League side it should be noted, not instead of.

It will be sad if George isn't there next season in some capacity as I have always found him pleasant saying hello when at Redcar and when we came up to Brough Park to support Jacob Bukhave. Whatever happens at Brough next season though the main thing is I hope the fans will be happy otherwise some will walk away and the die hards will be left. I was chatting to a Diamonds fan last night and he said "We just weren't good enough. Some don't like the track there, but I don't mind watching the racing there because if all tracks were the same it would be boring.

Is that the first time the Bears have won a KO Cup at Brough? They certainly didn't in 1980!

There was a plate of sour grapes there as well for anybody who wanted them

Crazy Northern humour is the best.

I remember when he first started at Redcar and no-one had a good word for him and his humour. It was noticible that he toned his accent down, and more people took to him. He is good at filling in as shown, along with Dalbers, when he lost over an hour at Brough when the we had the horror crash of Greaves and Palm Toft horror crash on the back straight.

No wonder a lot of people don't bother posting on here anymore when you just get ridiculed. Perhaps best not to bother replying at all if you're not interested, especially when sentences don't make sense anyway. What's the other yeast? Are we talking about bread now?

Could it have been a testimonial or veterans challenge meeting ? Especially if Banger was also involved. Rather than an official fixture

He’s 25 and a perfectly decent rider. Why would we not be happy to have him when we have Klindt, Busk Jacobsen, Bellego, Pieszczek, Bjerre, Covatti and Jorgensen.

I wonder if there will be a place for James Shane's (if fit ) in the Poole line up next season .he would be useful to have .it will also be nice to see a lot of the younger riders learning there trade riding at no 6 or 7 .before they move on to the bigger clubs .

He didn’t double his gsa this season technically, it was formed on all his performances at the tail end of last season with Ipswich the same time he was firing for mildenhall as correctly stated by ruckeroo. I agree with ruckeroo he’s been out shone by Anders this year and has I feel gone backwards as a rider in what is an easier league

Totally side-tracking, as this thread seems to be sticking far too closely to the OP for comfort, for the BSF,. One of the question setters for The Chase, and others quiz shows; notably The Weakest Link and 15-1, is a friend of mine. Although he has never seen a live meeting he is a big fan of speedway and even had an action photo of Franky Zorn on his board when at the BBC in London. He is therefore prone to throw the occasional speedway question into these shows, although they are hardly likely to test the average fan; such as how many laps to a heat, how many brakes, how many riders in a race, in what sport is Tai Woffinden a World Champion etc.? As he says he is happy to give plugs to something he enjoys. PS Please send a PM if you know the answers to the above questions as I am really struggling. with a couple.

That is really good news

After Swindon battering Wolves and Ipswich in the playoffs my top riders for October would be Doyley, Batch, Muesli, Jensen, Ellis, Vissing, Perks.....

This year's team I believe was all down to Martin and unfortunately I can't shed any light whatsoever on wether there has been a change of management or not... few rumours in the bar last night but nothing worth repeating... No doubt it will all come out in time... Regards THJ

Sorry, but my vote for rider of the night was Max Clegg by a country mile. He rode far above the standard he is currently at, and inflicted the only defeat of the night on Erik Riss. FROM THE BACK! Gating tart he ain't.

... unless they actually wanted to win the Play Offs! Regards, The Champions

given the paucity of fixtures couldn't every club run a 2nd team? Perhaps using 6 and 7 too

Max Dilger

You can't compare football to speedway.When Sheffield Wednesday were in the play off final we took 42,000 to Wembley and could have sold more but were refused more tickets on safety grounds.Everywhere Wednesday and United go they sell out their allocation whether it's 2000 or 6000 to normal away grounds.Some teams come to Hillsboro and bring 100 !!!!!! Football is way bigger than speedway .Our support at Sheffield could be better but as I've said in other threads speedway in Sheffield is competing with 2 football teams ,ice hockey,basketball,rugby,netball,non league football teams and that's without the night life in the city centre.Places like Scunthorpe Kings Lynn Poole have not got the same local competition when they are competing for people to spend their leisure time and money.I am fortunate that I can afford to go to both but there are loads who can only support one sport .If we can get 2000 -2500 next season our promotors would be over the moon.In reality 1500-2000 would be my guess and that's with a good team to support.Speedways days are numbered because of stupid rule changes ,poor track prep and drawn out meetings.

its a cracking stadium but the straights have always been slightly too long for the bends - conversely i believe STMP is the opposite with straights being slightly too short. I think racing at BP would be greatly improved by shortening the straights - I believe Wolves did this donkeys years ago and Swindon of course have just done it, in both cases the racing improved.

It is NOT Rough Park it is Brough Park why act this childish way when you have Newcastle fans including myself who have congratulated you on the silverware?

It's very clear that 'a night at the Speedway', ie two 'teams', 4 lads per race, 15 heats etc etc, simply isn't enticing enough, or being considered value for money, for the required number of potential punters to regularly deliver big crowds in its current guise... Not sure though that those who run their respective clubs all have the capability in doing anything about it collectively unfortunately, as surely they would have done so already? One thing for sure is that continually running events with the priority being you meeting your employees agenda, rather than the agenda of your customers, cannot work in business.. The NSS shows that even with its great racing, 'build it and they will come' is nothing more than a throwaway line from a movie.. Enticing the punters in through targeted marketing, and impressing them from the moment they arrive, to the moment they leave, is the only thing that can drive forward an entertainment buisness... You sometimes get the impression that some Promoters would rather spend more time, energy and focus on negotiating an average for one of their riders to get reassessed down by 0.1% or so, rather than use their obvious passion and love for the sport to focus their energies on what really matters to their customers. .

Just to get one final opportunity to say a huge thanks to Mimmo for all the updates and stat work he does over the season. You are a legend and fingers crossed for a dev team out of the Adrian Flux again soon.

Tractors only worth 1K.. Leaks oil over the track

There are no riders called Paul on the list