Leaderboard

Glasgow has been selected to host a SGP qualifier on May 23rd next year.

That would be terrific , I realise he isn't the rider we all knew and loved but it would be a very fitting way for him to end his career.

And so it begins......

I reckon we'll end up with Chris Harris, well until March anyway

Some of us are just amused that it is considered 'rule bending' when it is in the rules you can ASK for a reduction if they haven't ridden over here for at least 3 years!

Because we are not in the Championship yet!

That is so true. In the olden days, I used to do Sheffield (Thursday), Ellesmere Port (Friday) and Hyde Road (Saturday). It didn't matter who was racing, I just wanted to see a sport called speedway. It was more about the spectacle then, where now it's more about what team can con their way to a title. And fans are being fooled into thinking speedway is worthless unless you're winning.

A serious sport would not need the pretence of keeping a season alive. The league table matches are mugging you off, mate. I suppose it would be more believable if there was a serious effort to get relegation into speedway, then clubs wouldn't purposely drop points to fiddle their way into the last two weeks of the season. Perhaps an idea to keep short-sighted cult followers happy with speedway is to have every team seeded to the Play-Offs. Cut out the middle man and turn it into the boat race. Persuade every remaining fan that their side has a chance to win the Final, and that every match until then is just a nice warm-up. In fact, allow bouncy castles to introduce new fans who like bouncy castles. They might wonder what the sound of motorbikes is and people with badges filling in scoresheets. A lot of speedway fans since the Play-Offs were introduced, are merely the John Terry in Chelsea's Champions League win a few years back. They only turn up and wear the colours to be part of the glory.

I think you will find that riders do not say anything about where they are riding until it is announced by the club. In the SS report, he was also saying he would like to be racing in the PL & NDL. Hoping for a PL spot is the 1st part of the story. The 2nd is his hospital visit for a progress report. The 3rd is that the door is still open for an NDL spot(his over 4 CL average probably will curtail his initial inclusion if the rules stay the same) The 4th is that he would love to be back at Scunthorpe(We will not let him go to another club )

Whether it does or not, and it's incredibly harsh saying this, but we can't include Batch unless we are allowed to keep the same team. If we have to build to 42.50 and had Doyley and Batch then the tail will even longer than the team that started 2019. Feel bad saying that as Batch was so good last year and won a lot of people over.

So is Bjarne a realistic option? Would be good to have him at Poole again before he retires. Should be okay at CL level..?

Bjarne Pedersen set to retire is news most Pirate fans would view as the end of an era and most would see as sad to hear. He gave amazing service to Poole and always gave his best, his 21 points at Lakeside would forever live in my memory and I really hope he gets a farewell meeting because he fully deserves one.

How about having a heavy top 5 & having both Thompson Twins at reserve??

But that's the issue Vince, the 'normal league meetings', dont deliver those less regular fans who know about the sport, therefore dont deliver big crowds, hence no atmosphere, hence no increase in crowds. A perfect vicious circle.. The 'play off qualifiers' don't seem to engage people regularly enough, and the play off themselves almost become then a 'loss reducer' for the season as 'lapsed fans' come back. . However I bet at most tracks the increased attendance doesn't cover the overall short fall in attendance through the season to watch 'the qualifiers', by some distance... You might as well give away free tickets to as many people of a certain demographic as you can... I would suggest anyone 15 to 25 should just be targeted and offered free tickets as that is the glaring demographic missing from most Speedway meetings.. 15 year olds now hunt in packs so 10 or so would attend together, and even though there has been free admission for 'kids' for a long time at some tracks, not many get to 16+, leave school, and pay to attend, therefore the system doesn't garner any return.. And hardly anyone under 25 is seen at Speedway these days. And plenty of them will have jobs and disposable income due to more of them now still living with parents, before the (inevitable for many), 'family and mortgage' kicks in around 27-30 years old, and that disposable income becomes an oh, so distant memory.. Target these demographics and, if between 19 to 25, offer one free ticket and maybe three more meetings at say a tenner to try and get them hooked? Anyone 15 to 18, just throw free tickets at them.. They are not there now so no loss, and the more that attend (paying or not), the more atmosphere naturally gets created. Which may encourage more to attend more regularly in future. And a virtuous circle begins.. And if nothing else, should you reach the play offs there would be a good few hundred more in the local area who, (by definition of attending for free during the season), now know about the team and sport and might therefore, go along to watch on those nights and pay full price?

MASSIVE CONGRATS to Danny Ayres, 2019 Scorpion of the year, HAS to be back in 2020

I myself am in favour of radical changes which i won't repeat here because i can't take the flak atm. It does look, however that another season of 'lets pretend nothing's wrong' is ahead of us with 2/3 teams being bribed to enter the top league stripping the less disastrous (i won't say successful) CL and NL of clubs. One thing i would say again is that people talk about dilution when big names don't ride here but actually the product is well presented good racing, not necessarily star names whose names ,lets be honest, mean f. all to the general public.

Yes. He’s ”doing” the meeting, as in one of the organisers.

Just imagine a team winning every single game in a season, then losing in the final of the playoffs in the dying seconds. Nobody would watch such a sport would they. TV viewing figures would be awful.. Advertisers most certainly wouldn't be interested.

Several sports in the US over the past few years have started to see teams deliberately end their seasons the worst team in the league... 'Tanking' is the latest buzzword to describe what the teams are doing.... This then gives them one of the first draft picks for the next season, or the chance to pass up this opportunity and take several team improving players from a competitor and give them the pick instead, hence they write off one season to potentially improve the next.. Some even have written off several seasons to allow them to build up several of the better drafted players over a few years to help with longer term success.. However, the governing bodies of these sports are now discussing how best to deal legally with these teams suspected of 'tanking' as they feel that the integrity and credibility of their respective sports could be threatened by such antics, and are also acutely aware of possible impact to crowd numbers because of it.. British Speedway wouldn't take such action I would suggest as it's allowed to be a fundamental part of the sport..

Do not think there would be a single Brummies fan that would be anything other than delighted . If /when confirmed .

i am tempted as well. Perhaps take a few days off from work and do a mini holiday to see Hamburg and Swedish Pomerania.

try telling new news not old stuff mmmmmmmm

Sadly attitudes have changed .. even when Swindon were garbage and had nothing to race for people would still go in big numbers . Great times indeed

When has he ever said that? I think you are either on a wind up or full of "clutching at straws"!!!

nice looking team but there's no place for jason edwards who is nailed on at reserve ?

I'm not saying he is particularly exciting, just that in my opinion people would turn out to see him for his final season

Never realized he was that exciting to much of a risk on that average

Confirmed rumour 23rd May ACU Qualifying Round 1 Glasgow Scotland 23rd May FFM Qualifying Round 2 Lamothe-Landerron France 23rd May FMI Qualifying Round 3 Terenzano Italy 25th May DMSB Qualifying Round 4 Abensberg Germany 11th July SMF Challenge Žarnovica Slovakia

I can't find anything on the new Svemo site, horrible to navigate. Polish div 2 (third tier): 8. Josh Grajczonek 2,218 9. Bjarne Pedersen 2.143 12. Jaimon Lidsey 2,076

Silly post .. fans wont watch a team anymore who's season is over by june without the play offs go for ..so the plays offs not only paid big in the final they also keep the crowds levels up during the season .. Old fans are daft if they have not figured that out yet . it's been explained over and over again when this kind of garbage is put on here

Play-Off group matches are open to abuse. We all know teams have suffered mysterious engine failures early on to prove they need strengthening as their poor averages take a hit. The Play-Off Finals may attract added interest, but I doubt that compensates for reduced crowds over the course of the season for matches that either team can afford to lose most of the time. I mean, who can take seriously chasing a top-four place in a table of seven sides. More teams make the Play-Off semis than fail. Fans aren't daft. I have watched a team, which purposely tried not to win a match they could have finished top of the qualifying table by doing so. I think even winning the aggregate bonus point, as it were back then, would have seen them finish table winners. That one instance implies the qualifying matches are nothing more than padding out the season for seven months.

Wroclaw hoping to sign Dan Bewley

I agree that a big crowd will make the whole thing seem better but how many return to watch normal league meetings in the future? Those extra people are surely lapsed and armchair fans in the main who normally keep an eye on the results in the local paper or watch the meetings on TV. Doesn't seem to engage new fans in any numbers or keep people paying to come in the door. It's been the case for years that a club doing well in the league increases it's crowds significantly, also been the case that often enough the increase doesn't pay for a competitive team. Promoters are much maligned for a lack of ambition when they run cheaper teams but in truth they are often the clubs that survive year on year.

Bjerre Kurtz Wright Bewley Lidsey Etheridge Auty or Pickering If Fricke decides not ride in the UK that would be a solid side with a number of riders capable of improving their averages.

I don't do twitter either but a couple of his tweets have been shared to other forums - or should that be fora?

The clubs who run in the uk at weekends hardly do any better do they ? if the product is better on a weekday rather than a weekend Dave will go on the week day . More things to do at a weekend now in the uk than go to speedway a fact lost on some .

I wasn’t proposing pay to ride. And I assumed PL clubs would cover some expenses of the NL riders, pay an appearance fee, arrange sponsorship and help them with machinery and advice. It’s clear that some 15 year old NL riders are very promising and one would have thought that PL clubs would be delighted to take Palin and the Thompson twins under their wing, just as they would have snapped up Woffinden, Ward and Lambert.

I do hope we are not drifting into the cheap "snowflake generation" argument here are we? I'll give my own experience as an example... I was first taken to the sport aged 7 to Belle Vue's Hyde Road and was hooked..we then went every Saturday. Not a school night, no problem. Though I suspect it might have been a problem had it been a midweek track at that young age....less so 2-4 years later. Then, we certainly had the odd midweek trip to follow the Aces to Sheffield and Birmingham. I am now a father of six year old twins, they will be 7 by the time of the next speedway season, so the right age (I think) to have a grasp of what's going on and potentially engage with it. Bedtime at ours is 7-7:30, later at the weekend. So a midweek track is out for now. Additionally, even when they are a little older and could cope with a later midweek night, we - unlike my parent's boomer generation - are much more squeezed for time...and disposable income beyond the mortgage and bills. Like many in the 30s-40s generation, both us parents work and after the kids get back from after school club and we rush to make dinner, there's little time left for anything before bed. In contrast, as a child, I had the luxury of a stay-at-home mum who could get us kids home at a decent time, have dinner ready early for the whole family and much more time for any possible midweek outing. Society has changed. Now, this isn't all about me, speedway can draw from older and younger groups. But I do think that appealing to my (current) demographic is absolutely key for speedway now and in the future. We only really have time- and money - for weekend outings and if speedway can't cater for us, it is going to miss out on thousands of families like mine.

Nothing wrong with bikes, it's the tracks,,, those ssme bikes will be good on good tracks and poor on poor tracks, whatever country they are in. You are more likely to get better close racing on tracks that have multi lines into corners and on tracks that you don't have to scub all your speed off going into bends. Flowing race tracks most of the time offer better racing in most motor sports.

well surely the crowd should have voted for him ?

I could see a good 100 or so stoke fans going over to Buxton if they came back into the nl.

If Buxton want to ride Sunday should not have to worry about competing with Sheffield. Possibly a few Stoke fans may fancy going to Buxton. Seems a bit more viable for them compared to previous season.

exactly I have on ignore then a lunatic quotes him

Pre season 2017, 2018 & 2019 Put him on ignore as it is easy & you don't have to read his posts(unless someone quotes them. He is a

If that is the case and I think it will, I won't be returning in 2020.

Agree with this comment... To me he took Ully's standing leg and was hard done by... if it was the other way round I would been screaming for all 4 back... however it didn't happen but at the end of the day it's down to how the Ref saw it an Ruff agreed with the Ref on the Barker/Phillips decission which I and many others didn't agree with so ya pays ya money and takes ya chance... Ultimately and luckily it had no bearing on the final result as the best team won over the two legs... If either of those incidents did have an impact can you imagine the bloody uproar on here... and that's before Jenga started stirring the shot... It comes to something when the winning team are still moaning after the event... Regards THJ

Watching the replay and at no point did Wright have both wheels over the white line

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.

A new track curator for the club. http://www.sheffield-speedway.com/news.php?extend.2808&fbclid=IwAR27vZMHhh-BKtCAoFVbzUZFt7ux8z2T1s457R2Q6LOVHX38OmAtHlfJvJA

I hope for Redcar and speedways sake that that isn't true. He's made a massive difference at Redcar over the last few seasons and is one of the best in the country , irreplaceable!