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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.

38 has made the product inferior. We need to go 40 points at least, preferably 42.

Snickers are going to be renamed Marathon shortly, so you can reminisce with one in your hand lol.

According to RAC route planner its 39 point summat. I looked it up before posting it Those were the days Mary Hopkin

According to Google, Shay stadium to Hyde Rd is 38.4 miles (using motorways)

As Kent have confirmed they will be applying to join the Championship, and Berwick have confirmed "business as usual" and announced two signings, time to put this one to bed, eh? Good old CVS!

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?

acesofww2.com/can/aces/pepper.htm Rode for Newcastle, and lost his life during a test flight... Edit: not sure about the problem with the URL, but you can Google him.

My apologies - it was 'waytogo28' who made the original post.

"I thought the distance quoted was 35 miles where a promotion can claim 'protection of interests' and object to another club (full stop and not just sharing a race night) " Personally I thought it as 30 miles, either way reckon Belle Vue would welcome the local derbies....

prob to remind people down there to reset their clocks !

Yes it’s called the decline of the NL !

There has been a team representing this very forum on Eggheads, some while ago now. Also teams of Glasgow and Belle Vue fans. I saw an old "Bullseye" (circa 1985 if I remember rightly) on Challenge a while ago and one of the couples said they were Poole fans.

got to learn to ride the rough with the smooth

From what I've seen at Kent, Drew doesn't gate consistently, which on a track that in my opinion doesn't lend itself to much passing, has severely limited him. Having said that, seeing Max Clegg and Leon Flint both take him from the back by riding a wider line on his home track suggest that either he's not 'dialled in' at Central Park, or that he's not as good as we expected. He also went through a spell when he seemed unable to get through four races without an error/crash in one. He is only young, and it may just be that Central Park doesn't suit his style. Last night his first two rides were very ordinary, following home JJ and Jake after poor gates, but then he rode an excellent heat 13 to beat the Leicester top two off of gate 3! It did seem last night that if you didn't gate, you struggled to make any headway. Dan G tried all he knew at the back but made no impression on the fast gating Ryan TD in heat 5, and then Hume, so impressive first time out, likewise could not trouble JJ, who rode a good line in heat 6. Did JJ change bikes for heat 13? Why, he barely got out the gate on that one! Also, did Rob not deserve to go out in 15 rather than Dan? Pity we could not win the match, even if the Lions deserved the trophy. Right from the off all the young Kings - plus a very entertaining skipper - were worth watching in 2019, and one or two hopefully will go far.

All clubs know the points limit that's been discussed at the pre-agm meetings as well as the likely teams in each league The AGM should simply be a rubber stamping procedure.

He will be doing both... Any clash would be quite rare I would imagine.. Still, I think it would be better to have 100 or so regulations, sub regulations and sub, sub regulations, written out for any such eventuality... Just in case..

He certainly livened up a few second half’s at Berwick, they were more exciting than the main meeting at times.

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

Done it before in 1991 where our closest rivals were Bradford. Won the Gold Cup possibly might have won the league, had it not been for terrible injuries suffered by Kelvin Tatum and Mikael Blixt. But that was then when we were in a 13 team League. Wise decision to stay where we are now in the Championship.

Reading about new owners and supposedly exciting times for British Speedway going forward does nothing to lift the mood of Worky fans facing a long winter with nothing to look forward to next season. Oh for someone with the wherewithal to bring it back. Sure the great custodian that was Ian Thomas will be looking sadly down. Now then where did I put those anti-depressants.

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. .

Well it's been rewarded with a lot more trophies than Redcar/Boro that's for sure. Congratulations on your win by the way which was more than deserved.

He’s had one poor season, I’d hardly call that going stale. Struggled in every league compared to 2018, it can happen in speedway. He may even have ridden himself out of it but for his two massive crashes. I don’t think a move to Kent would do him any harm but riding at Lynn every week can only be good for his gating while it remains to be so hard to pass there. Also worth remembering that last year was his breakthrough season and he rode for Lynn then so it can’t have been too bad for him.

Fingers crossed the track issues are sorted, that they stay sorted and Plymouth thrive in the Championship next year.