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It's by being a "snobby southerner" that by re-locating to York I've managed to introduce to them a bit of class and sophistication!

Speedway as a whole follows the same failing business model of many high street shops, namely products of differing quality but prices not reflecting. Its clear the there are plenty who will pay lower rates for a lower standard just look at Primark/Sports Direct for example. There are still those who will pay higher for better items but they are fewer transactions per year. Just look at the GP's Cardiff is packed, SON is packed but these are high level one off events. Weekly low grade showings need to reflect the prices. Speedway isn't the only area failing like this, Cinema's operate under the same model, chain restaurants are much the same but the takings and attendance in both have also been on a rapid decline (Pre Covid). If Speedway wants to continue weekly it needs to be at a weekly price, if it wants to make bigger events monthly then so be it. But don't bemoan people for asking for value for their money or choosing to spend it elsewhere. I don't bemoan clubs closing because either the product that was offered wasn't correct or the way the business was run wasn't up to scratch. Speedway will continue in this country but it will have to evolve to survive.

Surely what is most important is the quality of the racing rather than the reputation of the riders. In the past there have been teams stacked with top riders who won each week and their crowds went down. With a track like ours, the racing is at it's best when the level of the riders is similar. Who remembers the initial PC season opener? The riders were of a similar standard, no top guys, but the meeting was superb. Also, some of the Colts meetings have produced wonderful racing. This obvious leveling down could actually produce a much better product. I can't wait and given it's been so long I'd probably go and watch anything at the moment.

In fairness mate I'm protective over scunthorpe because I was born and bred there. It's the team I followed in the 70s and 80s and again since 2005. The club and its owner have been a major part in the development of my lad as a rider and for which we shall be eternally grateful. I make no secret of who I am and have said on many occasions that Luke Harrison the current 250cc champion is my son

It's not a secret riders and parents are being informed first , and no promoters have divulged the info it was sent directly from the scb at acu house. no lies been old so unfortunately there is no conspiracy and no investigation needed. Would suggest from your post you aren't a rider, parent of a rider or official of a club or the bspl so why would you need to know just yet

I would disagree with that.Batchelor is always at his best behind a strong No1 and when hes not sulking.If you want a star attraction to put bums on seats, love or loath him you would be hard pushed to top Nicki P. Still riding in Polish Elitserien whereas batch is in div1 and will never be the same class .(in my opinion)

MY VIEW.... The best we can hope for is a 4 month season July to September, the whole of U.K. should be revamped NOW but only for 2021. Teams to be made-up of U.K. based riders. Meanwhile every effort should be made for a complete relaunch of our once great sport for 2022, this to include: 1. To get Coventry, Oxford & Bradford up & running. 2. To standardise bikes for the 2 lower leagues therefore lower (overall) cost. 3. Cap pay rates in all leagues that are affordable via tracks income, 4. Stage creditable regular home fixtures @ all tracks. 5. Stop double up/down & guest other than injury cover. 6. Introduce the use of smartphones as part of the live meeting experience (to get the young involved). 7. Getting promoters heads out of the sand, take a step back & look again.

It doesn't really matter how speedway compares to other sports, or whether 20 quid is really value for money or not if people aren't coming through the turnstiles. With football you'll generally also know that the matches will be held regardless of the weather, and you're not standing around for most of the 90 minutes watching the pitch being mown...

People may laugh but most tracks in the UK are not suited to the modern super tuned laydown engines..

Someone should run a free training school for Deliveroo moped riders. If they ride in the rest of the country like they do in Oxford there's a fair few entertaining fence scrapers out there I daresay there could be a chance of a young rider possibly getting some Sponsorship from them. A nice photoshopped picture of a rider going full tilt around a bend photoshopped so his racesuit and bike covers had Deliveroo branding and colourscheme with a topbox on the rear mudguard. Throw in a nice snappy slogan about fast food delivered faster, the countries the rider could potentially be visible in. They can only say No but they might say yes. Even if it was only a couple of grand its better than a kick in the proverbials.

Seems a lot of people have seen a secret list? So which Promoters have broken the code or which forum Members are telling porkies. Hopefully the latter otherwise the Chairman might need to investigate. Whoops

Obviously not an Eastie fan, our announcements are always 100% credible and always have been

Not to mention that compared to 20-30 years ago we now all spend a considerable amount of disposable income without ever leaving the house (even if we could). Internet, mobile phones, TV subscriptions (SKY, Netflix, Disney etc etc), Spotify, Amazon Prime even Deliveroo.

How do you maintain balanced strength in depth sides? Jettison those at the top and bottom? What incentive would riders have to improve? Even with well balanced teams, some will score more and some less which then means you no longer have a balanced team. If they are watering down the league so that there are less at the top and being replaced with “rising stars” then I wouldn’t expect to fork out the same admission as previously either! I.e. if I pay to see a premier team, I expect to see premier riders.

The last time I spoke to Danyon he had a good steady full time job & young family . As much as he loves racing Speedway to race in Championship and National League he would need to give his job up so he would need to be able to guarantee a decent earning from Championship racing

I think you will find that ‘people north of watford’ will understand the language of ‘southerners’ quiet easily. It’s the snobby southerners who would struggle if it was the other way round.

Different rules in Scotland might have an impact as well.

Kent's traditional curfew call offs might be harder to stomach at £20 a time. I always felt speedway would be in trouble when the price increased to over a pound a race.

Im just glad they have stuck with stars, a couple are closer to rosette standard but try explaining that to a newbie

with a lot of the top NL riders maybe riding in the top leagues think they might drop the team ave to bring in more lower ave riders

I have a Texaco Star Rewards card. Could they be convinced to sponsor the reserves? The reserves might have to be regraded as:- 1) Unleaded 2) Leaded 3) Supreme

Why would there be a 1 star grade? I think you can only build a team of 38 plus 3 star or 39 plus 2 star Unless you can build 40 plus 1 star everyone not a 3 star or above is a 2 star. The numbers are irrelevant, they might as well have been A, B and C grades

Yep I heard that a think one is an Aries and the other is a Taurus... Regards THJ

Great I will look forward to that he has always been impressive round monmore

Can we expect to see him at Wolves this season?

Could well be he's very protective over scunthorpe lol

Which one? Is it a secret lol I,m thinking a parent from your posts

Yep

Getting a younger crowd into the stadium is paramount and you simply wont do that given the current plan of charging for them to enter.. "Ver Kidz" wouldn't be seen dead where their old man and Granddad like to go, and they "hang out" in packs... Therefore charging a 17/18/19 year old to pay to get in is pretty much folly and an expectation that simply wont be delivered.. And if there are any 17/18/19 year olds who follow the sport on their own, then them convincing their mates to pay 18 to 20 quid or so to watch it would need a miracle.. Yet this demographic could truly help the sport enormously... Their "reach" on social media within just a few 'shares' or 'tags' will often cover literally tens of thousand of people of the same or similar age, with mainly all local too, and no self respecting "yoof" will go anywhere without a 'selfie' showing everyone where they are and what they are doing.. Huge FREE advertising for the sport that targets exactly the demographic they want to attract.. How good is that? And for those clubs who own their own food areas and bars, (if nothing else), a couple of hundred 'late teens' in their stadiums would put a good few quid in the respective tills, as burger and beer are two of their favourite pastimes, and they would swell the crowd to make the event look like its popular and maybe add some atmosphere too.. And the beauty of providing free entry is that hardly any of this demographic are going now , so pretty much zero loss of income.. TV, radio, newspapers etc etc. Are all now seen as pretty much irrelevant by the younger populace, and all the various instant news outlets and social media have replaced them.. Virtually every kid has a phone, and virtually every kid has a social media group (or ten), that they share 'everything' with, so let them in for nothing and let them spread the word for you and be your advertisement... Give them say four weeks of free entrance then charge incremental increases in admission. Maybe four matches for a fiver then cap the U20's at a tenner.. Keep it free for U17's..

So there's a thing then if they are both used in the same team... one will be a one star rider and the other will have a 2 point average... Tell me that's not nuts... Regards THJ

CL is on at 1.17.40 if anyone interested in giving it a listen Interesting that in 2022 there will be 2 rising stars in each league. With the likes of King and Crump in teams the rising stars will have someone to look up to and get help from. Individual series at each club, but that will be dropped if season is shortened. A GP like series. Supporters have been loyal and 85% of season tickets have been kept. Sheffield have lost Pedersen but have come out of it better with Batch. Kemp gained a lot from 2020, and CL lookimg forward to working with hometown lad.

Saw him many times in Bristol back in the day.. He was always value for money.. His first two albums including 'Universal Cleaner' were re-released last year on one CD.

Tero travels, but he has had a base/workshop in Newcastle.

no eastbourne

Four... Unless it's a BOGOF deal of course...

Another important point not confirmed is the minimum average Nothing to say it will still be 3. To encourage using extra young Brits it could be 2 again.... Could make a huge difference to the final pieces of the jigsaw

That's the key word TEAM & Berwick have a great team spirit... Can't ignore them

Fred Wedlock..

Dropping capacity wont work as you cannot sensibly supply enough riders from the youth classes across the league plus the majority of the teams are run midweek. I hope its a cap on the top riders averages creating more strength in depth sides as just reducing the team build averages artificially inflates the averages of riders and creates the impression they are better than they are.

Josh Bates?

When did the UK reduction go to 5% a thought it was 2.5%?

Peter Collins said this many years ago U.K. tracks with few exceptions took their shape from the stadia unlike Sweden Poland Denmark that had built stadiums to suit a track shape. He would know coming from Belle Vue specifically built for Speedway.

The racing was better and safer with skill on the bike being paramount rather than ‘gate and go’ !

Lets go back to uprights in the UK, safer and cheaper to maintain....

I just hope when poland dumps them british promotors are strong enough to say we dont want u either!

I think when live spectator sport does return , with the length of time it has been away there will be a huge demand. Premier League football, top level rugby, International cricket, Wimbledon, Silverstone to name a few. Sadly I don't think speedway will be one of those sports. With an alarming reliance on admission money to stay afloat, the group of people who may be more nervous to return to the fold are the over 50's, predominately speedway's demographic core fan base. Add to that another watered down league when you think it could't get watered down anymore, I dare say this will be reflected by admission prices, yes I doubt that too. I feel for Eurosport, they have jumped in with both feet and ended up with not much to work with. A 7 team top division was painful enough, try explaining to new fans a top division with only 6 teams, good luck with that. As usual after the BSPA conference, optimism is high from everybody in the sport, even at Swindon after their late withdrawal, A brand new stadium to look forward to which ironically should have been built 3 years ago while houses shoot up ten a penny around it. It beggars belief why it was not built last year when there was definitely no speedway or spectators to disrupt its build. As usual the proof of the pudding will be in the eating and for all the yearly eternal optimism nothing much will change, modern rocket ships on unsuitable, outdated British tracks. Covid and the Polish juggernaut League hasn't helped but I just can't see how the good times are ever going to roll again in this country. no matter what the promoters try to do.

A wise old store manager about 35 years ago walked his new night manager around the store early in the morning.. The new night manager was 'quite pleased with himself' at what he had achieved that night, only leaving 5 cages of stock out of 120 he and his team received... The wise old store manager asked me (I mean 'him' obviously!), why hadn't the other five been done? The answer of "no time boss" was met with a simple question.. Which was. "If I had said last evening that I will walk in this morning and give you 1000 pounds in your hand if you had completed 120 cages, would you have completed them?" The answer was an obvious "Yes", therefore he quite rightly answered.. "So it was just down to a lack of will, self pride and desire then?".. No answer did that young man have, but it did focus his mind for the rest of his career.. Now... If every promoter was guaranteed £10,000 in their hand for every meeting they ran without guests, I am pretty sure they would find the 'will and desire' to find a way to do it, and subsequently have the 'self pride' of running the sport properly.. Poland dont use guests in the UK sense but do D/U and call them guests, however the D/U riders only ride for that team, and it has only been allowed for Covid.. Betard would never plough the hundreds of thousands of euro they do into the sport if Woffy or Majic were allowed to help out their opponents to ultimately see Wroclaw fail through their actions, and the teams they help out then be successful.. If the UK wants "big sponsors" for teams then you cant really have guest riders, so why not try and find a way to do it now.. Next year should be a 'free hit' given the uncertainty going on, so when better to see what could work?

Multibuy tickets are definitely the way forward. I've still got my unused 10 meeting Eastbourne pass from last season. Hopefully i get the chance to use it this year.

Even if the carnet does last a year it’s still a ball ache, I know riders have ridden abroad before... I was one of them. Every bike frame / engine number had to be on the corner with long waits at the border etc.... I’ve also been the organizer when you get a call on Friday morning saying ‘can you race on Sunday in Germany’ , just organizing ferry’s/ tunnels, time off work, bike prep etc is hard enough with having to add the “fun” of customs to it all. still... blue passports eh?

Just use a debit card instead , never had to pay any charges when iv gone to Asia which aint part of EU..