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Spot on. For some reason speedway in this country seems to not want to even attempt to change. Why that is I'm not sure. Clearly there are some people within the sport who understand professionalism. My team Ipswich are one. The race suits matching bikes, and a real feeling or brand identity within the stadium on racenights is lightyears ahead of what it was even 15 years ago plus the Ipswich website is possibly the best out there. So why does none of that travel further up the tree especially given Louis is a director of the BSPL

Been banging this drum for a few years now, British speedway is run by the riders for the riders and until someone somewhere within the sport realises the fans are the be all and end all the sport will continue to die

God works in mysterious ways.

Hmm... this year is Connor's 10th in the sport, so is probably due a testimonial, he's 28! I don't want to do the lad down but i don't think he's going to "make it". For me, Connor and riders like him should not be riding in NDL teams but should be riding in the main body of CL teams as a good club journeyman, instead CL teams prefer to use PL riders. Connor is not one for the future... he's one for now.

Cracking meeting, with respect to Birmingham and Newcastle, this was easily our best away performance of the season. A very well earned point that could easily have been more. Not sure why Newman was put off -15 after touching the tapes in heat 3, Ruml had just won heat 2 and ended up having only 6 rides. MacDonald still looks unfit and with Thomas likely to be out for a period, R/R offers limited manouvering with an unfit reserve, although Batchelor does get an extra ride. Anybody thinking of going to Redcar should go, been some great racing on my two visits this season.

One of life’s losers you pal. Grow up.

I am sorry for the dust, we had been watering from this morning, but due to the strong wind it was drying as fast as we could get it on the track, we pretty much ran out of water, if you noticed I was even trying to get water out of 2 of the drains between meetings. Apologies!!

This must surely be changed in the morning when someone sees sense. The guest choices are OK but ffs why would you make life any harder than you need to against Leicester?

At Scunny last night Conor blew an engine and told our scorpions tv commentator about "thats all he needed with a double header coming up," with him accepting a guest role he is within his rights to change his mind, No conspiracies, i quess the 2 discussed the situation and came up with Edwards and Conor stay for the cubs

Forget all the Glasgow internal disputes perhaps the Scorpions just rode well and had a good win!

Zarnovica Result 1 - Martin Vaculik - 14 2 - Dan Bewley - 13 (after runoff) 3 - Robert Lambert - 13 4 - Rasmus Jensen - 12 5 - Peter Ljung - 11 6 - Luke Becker - 10 7 - Dimitri Berge - 9 8 - Jan Kvech - 7 9 - Jacob Thorssell - 7 10 - Eduard Krcmar - 6 11 - Matic Ivacic - 5 12 - Daniils Kolodinskis - 5 13 - Tero Aarnio - 3 14 - Max Ruml - 2 15 - Daniele Tessari - 2 16 - Erik Bachhuber - 1

You would think Discovery would be the ideal partner.. The only concern would be that they would be used to dealing with fellow ultra professional organisations, who have individuals well versed in dealing with people of the same standard.. The GP's will have that given the level of organisations that have been behind them.. And you also have to have the concern that the Promoter's fierce desire to completely control the sport would ultimately scupper any company coming in to partner it/take over.. It would be game changer though if a huge global organisation got the opportunity, and autonomy, to lead the domestic sport out of it's current malaise, and into a bright new future.. Hope springs eternal...

Basso certainly isn’t the issue doing perfectly fine the issue is our second heat leader and senior reserve. One that can’t hold position due to riding a lawn mower and the other is consistently inconsistent.

We can argue till the cows came home about what was said but it doesn’t get away from the fact that the team is poor, one way to get fans back on side is go out and make some statement signings people will soon forget what was said in the star by & by whom, as already stated by others they are out there

The "tipping point" of it being a credible offering in a Team Sport guise went probably a couple if decades ago, when 'Guestfests' started to appear regularly... Usually to accommodate the individual aspirations of the top riders as the FIM grew its competitions.. Then along came Poland and to a lesser degree Sweden, with their "lands of milk and honey" and suddenly there wasnt enough riders of a level that the Promoters steadfastly (or maybe stubbornly?), wanted to run their clubs at.. Hence we jumped into 'Doubleupfests' taking place every night, with the obvious knock on effect of making even more 'Guestfests' when these riders were either needed in two places at once or got injured, meaning two teams (and for a time three teams when 'Trebling Up' was in place), needed covering with riders from other teams.. The answer to this issue was an obvious one.. Realign the leagues into 3 clearly demarcated ones, ensuring that each team had an even share of what "upper level talent" remained, and reduce the numbers in the team to at least six, thus ensuring each team came to the tapes at the "correct level" for their infrastructure with the reduction to six per team meaning enough riders were available to be competitive at thier 'natural level'.. With the number six riders in the top two leagues being "RS' level to ensure development of UK talent existed.. Instead. We had "let's do fixed race nights so the top names will come back"... Which (as anyone with half a brain could foresee), didnt happen, and became "let's do fixed race nights so loads of riders can ride seven nights a week for any team that needs them, restricting clubs to nights on which they may not actually make the most money, and restricting the potential number of fans who attend given what should be a 'weekend sport' has now become an any night one".. When it needed vision and a radical plan for 'stand alone' future growth, it just got more of the same fudge, make do and mend.. Sadly A truly GREAT product, held back by ridiculous infrastructure..

My father and I came down to this meeting and we brought with us a speedway 'newbie' who expected us to win after we had talked our beloved Pirates up so much. After the meeting he said "maybe next time, bring me along when you're riding against a bottom of the table team." Anyways, we blame him for the loss....the newbie jinx and all that

As THJ says someone from the club who actually tells the truth on what is happening. You've got to think as well our fan base probably like most clubs is a very ageing fan base who probably some don't have mobile phones or internet access and the only way of finding out what is happening with the club is to buy the speedway star you'd think the club would make every effort that whatever was being printed in the speedway star had been checked, checked and checked again. You've got the (supposed) number 1 saying one thing and then the club saying something else to then say what was in the speedway star didn't come from the club, well where did it come from then? It just smacks of being so amateurish.

Another example is the England Test team and how they have almost single handedly made five day cricket become a two or three day affair over the past few years... Giving their own fans terrific value for money in a short space of time, as they get to see England have two full innings, while the opposition fans only get to see their team have one...

On various videos I watched years ago from Edinburgh, I always remember the commentator being so biased it was unreal. Any time a home rider was passed or beaten, there was always a "valid"excuse.

What do you mean …. Newcastle won tonight

Am not that old John, a vaguely remember 'Bambi' at Gossy and, Jaws and Moonraker at the Odeon.

Most would agree but some fault does llay with many supporters who for reasons best known to them will rarely turn out for anything other than a team league or cup match. Go back a good few years and you had a number of prestigious individual meetings and for local interest, three and four team tournaments (e g Eastbourne, Rayleigh, Canterbury etc. In the south east ) and admittedly a good few years back in that example but fans did turn up. League racing played a part but so did the array of other meetings which made up a seasons entertainment from March through to November but I guess the difference was that the sport had its villains and the good guys and that was not only the riders but the promoters so the entertainment value was on and off track. The promoters will not gamble money putting on a meeting knowing that they are unlikely to make a profit and with the lack of sponsorship for the big meetings which might attract the top names for the right money racing on a night when you will almost fill a stadium (Friday, Saturday or Sunday particularly when Poland take a summer break) means supporters are left with what you have today. The lack of large corporates/household names willing to underwrite a meeting is understandable as no one with a decent brand will want to be associated with a sport for all the reasons quoted by many of the more knowledgable contributors to this topic. So many issues arise be it from the state of the stadiums and facilities through to rider ability to rules. You then have the restrictions on rider movements between the U K and Europe so the sport has a lot to deal with but it is not helped by the custodians of the sport having failed miserably to grasp the post covid opportunity to reinvent the sport by trying something different to attract lapsed punters and new ones too. It will continue to experience a decline in interest from joe public until the promoters decide to look inwardly at what they have and stop looking at the sport through rose tinted glasses.

These days, less is often more, the success of T20 cricket shows this and then they went even lesser with The 100, even Golf is at it now with a 54 hole tournament with all the players teeing off at the same time... where as Speedway seem to want to artificially extend a meeting to beyond 2 hours by using tractor racing as a distraction as they think that punters will feel short changed if they've not had 2 hours "entertainment"

Reading this is truly sad. Being from Sweden I'm sometimes worried about our league over here in different ways getting worse but by the looks of it it's nowhere near as bad as in Britain

Fair comment...

1st match took 2 hours on the bob. 40 mins track prep for the 2nd match and we're underway at 21:10... I've got to be out of the supermarket car park by 22:15, not a chance I'll see the end of this. They even gave a warning about the supermarket car park over the pa... oh the irony. Not sure if there's a 22:00 curfew anyway.

And that could easily be done a couple of weeks after the last GP... They make it WAY more complicated than it needs to be.

At least I introduced a newbie to speedway and that's exactly what the sport needs....what's your contribution? Trolling.

Thank you for the clarificatiin I'll go and put the humble pie in the oven

Don’t think present GP riders should be allowed in Challenge qualifiers.Think the GP challenge needs a re-jig.( for instance)Think the Top 6 Challenge Final should meet the bottom 6 in Gp standings for places next year.( or something different). Present GP riders should should not get 2 chances.To Cosy.That would still leave places for wild Cards

in my personal opinion 2 and maybe 3 teams have signed riders knowing full well they wouldn't hang around so they could use (misuse) the guest rule. Having said that I don't know what else they could do in circumstances as they are.

Does anything make any sense at Newcastle!!

Struggling to understand why Newcastle have elected to have Andersen guest for Starke and not Wethers. They have cost themselves a Wells r/r ride with that decision.

I agree. Ben is an untried asset and you complain when he scores 9, including two race wins. Sack him. There would be a long queue to sign him, believe me. I'll take Danyon too. Cookie is brilliant, sometimes. Not sure I could cope with the moods though.

if scunthorpe can beat glasgow so can we!!!!!! more worried about plymouth than glasgow though

Are Discovery Sports not the ideal organisation to take that control? Not just of the UK scene but internationally. 1. They seem to understand that the flag ship SGP needs a high quality field hence SGP2 and in particular SGP3 and SGP4 aimed at developing young talent. For all Greg Hancock was a great ambassador for the sport it's so much easier in a social media world to market young talents to the youth market. 2. They have the broadcast platform and need content to sell subscriptions. That only happens if the content is attractive enough. I doubt that the current offering of SGP/SON and British Premiership is. 3. They want to grow the sport globally, reignite old markets (USA, Australia) and expand into new ones (Asia, Middle East, maybe even Spain) for the purpose of attracting more subscriptions. To do that they need control over development. You either work with them to realise the vision or you rally against it in the wilderness.

Kasper Andersen in as a guest. Not sure who for though, Wethers or Starke. Was announced at Redcar last night.

Who's fault was it?

people should not be thinking of attending speedway at Redcar, just come, its the fairest racetrack in speedway, even Joni Keskinen could ride it, slowly it seemed but he did.

Because it's not their property... it's like you coming round my house and putting cameras up... I know you like to follow me but I'd draw the line at that

'Incorrect Reporting',,, could lead to the spreading of 'misinformation'?

He had the same script at Plymouth at the end of season

The way I see it is the weather hasn't been detrimental to the building work, the so called modular buildings are in situ, so sounds more like more stalling by GI, with a statement coming soon it will be too late to race in 2023. Unfortunately I can see Swindon going the same way as Reading and Coventry.

I maybe shouldn't say this on here, but I've already turned down the offer of becoming Press Officer.

On Thursday Nielsen won heat 2, beating Kemp & Flint. He then had two last places, losing to Becker / Douglas & Masters / Worrall. Never raced a reserve again after heat 2. How can anyone expect him to score more than the 3 points he did?

The thing is the stuff put out on social media is dreadful. In a city with so much going on - entertainment-wise - then you need to grab your audience. How can you legitimately take a screenshot of a mobile phone and use that to advertise your event? I've said it before on here that I'm no expert but I'm willing to spare time and effort to knock up a couple of graphics that the club can use. Anything has to be a start.

Can the result not be awarded? What happened to boiler suits?

Should go back to the olden days, when no-one went to work on a Sunday!,,, you'd get plenty staff?

The problem started 20 years ago when clubs were allowed to operate double up and down riders, who had no link with the other club. It has got to the point now where riders are getting more out of the sport than the fans by having a team at every port. The supporter needs to feel the rider is part of them, their team, not some fly-by-night who is clock watching or afraid of being injured because he has another race date later on. It has got to the point now where riders choose the track based on its race day and not the club. It is no way for a team sport to exist. Speedway has reached fourth division short -termism.

I know you can't stand the bloke but no it wouldn't be funny, it'd be disrespectful.