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So I see now. The line up on Liveupdates had Zische in his place but has been changed. Glasgow now looking too strong for Poole

Certainly rumours about some Premiership clubs owing riders multiple weeks wages, don't know how true they are but Oxford and Sheffield have been mentioned.

You could probably say that about most meetings, not a fan of Turnbull but no obvious mistakes from her in my opinion.

it wouldnt be his fault would it!

personally i think dayle wood done a great job

That’s the problem it really was tonight we needed him . Nobody to blame but ourselves top rider and signing but has missed too many important meetings. Well done to Poole it can be overturned but it’s a big ask.

Scrape it bare and let it turned to dust

Have to say having worked in the hospitality area at Perry Barr in the lalst two years that the attitude of certain senior members of the stadium staff on Monday left a rather bad taste in the mouth. One or two of them made it pretty clear that they held Birmingham Speedway and it's staff and supporters with contempt

We find that as well especially with there being so many English refs

Where would riders come from for any new tracks? Six teams seems to the maximum to be even semi competitive in the top tier... Andt seven, maybe eight, in the 2nd tier... All the tracks lost over the past few years, and still doubling up is fundamental to the sport...

But the rain runs off the track taking shale with it and then contaminating the playing surface on the inside. Multi Sport stadiums will not entertain speedway as it makes a mess, leads to moise complaints, and a large amount of the stadium footprint is only used for a monority sport. The way to develop new facilities is find brownfield sites where you can develop a number of motorsport activities in a model not disimiliar to the Redcar facility. However the larger the town/city tend to have the most valueable land so perhaps Speedway future is more aligned to smaller towns like Kings Lynn or Workington with between 20-50,000 locals.

When Poland decide Mondays and Thursdays are the best nights to run their Speedway on every week, then I think we will be ahead of the curve.... As Plymouth has shown, and I believe Leicester has shown in the past, running weekend Speedway delivers bigger crowds, even if riders are missing or of a lesser standard... Clubs need to target kids aged 4 - 11, like McDonald's do, as they know that the loss leader "Happy Meal" will get sold alongside the Adults getting profit making meals too... They also know that on Monday morning the kids who attended little Williams birthday party at McD's on the Friday evening, Saturday or Sunday, will be talking about it, and those who attended will be mithering their parents to have their parties there... And those who just heard about the party, but didn't attend, will be mithering their parents as well!! Flood local infant schools with free tickets for kids and reduced price tickets for their parents or guardians.. There may be some who attend now, but not many, so what you may lose is nothing compared to what could be gained... And just charge a tenner for the Adults, as the vast majority of tenners will be new money, not regulars getting in cheap... But. And this where "grand gestures" never work in isolation.... "Build it and they will come" doesn't work... You then need to keep these people coming at a scaled reduced price, until they get hooked and are prepared to pay full price... And you do that through constant communication via email and phone... Lets be clear though, running on a Monday or Thursday during school terms won't encourage those parents to attend, regardless of whether VFM or not... As for those older kids? Sponsor local football, cricket, rugby etc etc leagues... Attend the games with bikes, and marketing gazebo. Some places have ten games being played at once, meaning hundreds of kids and hundreds of parents.. The beauty for Speedway is you don't need thousands more to attend at each track, just hundreds... Even a very, very basic local marketing campaign will deliver that, for not much outlay, if the right market is targeted, and you keep in communication with them.. Or, alternatively, carry on doing exactly the same thing but expect it all to come good..

I’d utilise bank holidays and school holidays to attract families. The first meeting of the season is always well attended for speedway starved fans, so I’d run a Sheffield meeting then and put the PCMT on a Saturday later in the season. I’d do the same with the British Final if no other club wanted it. That first night plus bank and school holidays would account for 12 meetings, all being well attended hopefully. The league title should go to the top of the table team with the top four competing for the KO Cup as this would make for more meaningful meetings. Run a wooden spoon cup for the other two, if it’s a six team league again like four years ago. I’d offer more special deals (endless options to try) and freebies to bump up the crowd as we saw on Monday that a big crowd can elevate an ordinary meeting. All this should be done if we stick with Dan & Brady types or not. If we throw them out then we restructure completely with rules making equipment cheaper to run and admission reflecting what’s on offer.

As we all know there aren't any good/ easy immediate answers it won't happen but I have mulled if maybe there were six in the main league next year keep the superstars but just have one home and away then straight into the play off's if you wanted to see Emil,Jack Holder, Fricke you might have just the one chance rather than 4-5 opportunities now. The top six clubs could then run a second team like Oxford have done at Championship level assuming say the current remaining 9 championship teams run it could be once/home and away with maybe 5 man teams with riders who are committed to being available for at least 90% of the fixtures. This would give more variety and we would have to keep double down as a necessary evil for the near term but the likes of the Cooks, Harris, Lawson, Masters, (maybe Douglas) could still compete in both leagues to earn a decent living. If the third tier continues to run maybe allow each team to have a couple of aussies Jordy Loftus is a good example struggled when he got here but is now finding his feet and chipping in with a few points each meeting hopefully he should develop into a decent riders who would commit to UK next 5-10 years. I realise people will say the model hasn't worked for Oxford this year but I get the impression the problems are more down to the health of the main backer than the operating model. Getting away from Mondays is a must the worst night of the week to put anything on as people have had the low of going back to work after the weekend high and just don't want to go out that night, Thurs and Fridays the weekend feeling is starting to get back in peoples head and they are more inclined to do things.

Shame Bimingham have closed at Perry Barr & I feel for Brummies fans who had their last 'farewell' Monday nite, but it could be worse. At Hull we had no such 'farewell' as the track(s) closed without any warning - twice. At the Boulevard there were rumours the speedway promoters weren't on the greatest terms with landlords Hull FC (who were on the up at that time) but there was no indication that speedway would end at the venue. Fans only discovered this news in the Hull Daily Mail - on the Thursday nite after the final meeting in October 1981. Similar at Craven Park, though there probably were clues, again the rugby landlords, this time Hull KR, were on the up, wanted to increase he size of the pitch with talk of enlarging the speedway track to Workington, Derwent Park size. Sadly again, the speedway club closed & were evicted with no warning with 2 home fixtures outstanding, the previous treble-winning season of 2004 with a huge wage bill due to slamming teams home & away all season impacted hugely. This time finances were the main factor, as coincedentally occured at Workington in later years. In fact I shared a few conversations with Comets team manager Tony Jackson about speedway requiring a 'wage cap' of some kind, but there would be the situation of telling your no.1 who maybe scored a full maximum, he is needed once again in heat 15, or perhaps again in a 'super heat'. Anyhoo, hopefully speedway could return to Hull (came very, very close on a couple of occasions in recent years I'm not allowed to discuss), in Exeter, Newcastle, Wolves, etc & now Birmingham. The sport in the UK can't affod to lose any more tracks: in 1981 there were 2 divisions each of 18-ish teams, so 36 in total. In 2025 there are approx 16 in the entire country, not including the non-league venues such as Duns & Lydd. I still watch speedway on TV & live at Scunny when I can make it, but it isn't the same as having a team of your own, and as the song goes "you don't know wat you've got, til it's gone". Sigh. Still, things aren't all 'doom & gloom' as proved by Scunny, Redcar, Leicester & now Workington tracks can & do return, interestingly in more rural than urban settings.....

Nonsense.

No brainer really, it's sad for Jordan but he needs to heal properly.

I can't see there being a TV contract with 6 teams and especially not 5 and it's questionable if there will be one with 7 as the TV companies haven't been queuing up to cover Speedway over the last few years.

Summed up very nicely and the downfall of the brummie dream. Rogers has done nothing for Speedway other than don a foreign team manager hat at and given opportunity, obviously they were scraping the barrel.

When the sport was "successful" it had only the top riders as fully pro... The rest rode part time for very, very decent money when compared to their other job... With second strings earning more in one night than they earned in a week in their "main job"... Now we have pro juniors.... But we also have crowds one tenth of the days of when the sport was successful... And we also have promoters quite happy to indulge Poland and have their leagues lack credibility due to playing second fiddle to them.. We also have promoters happy to indulge riders when it comes to their own individual ambitions by simply running a meeting anyway and borrowing from elsewhere when these riders are unavailable... They even sign riders from Denmark who cannot race on Wednesdays..... For me, all the things many of us have regularly said as being ridiculous on here, have been allowed to actually become part of the fabric of the operating model, so I truly cannot see a way out in all honesty... It has been a slow inexorable death by a thousand (self inflicted) cuts... Three times major radical changes should have been made... 1. When the GP's started to impact domestic Speedway... 2. When Poland started to impact domestic Speedway... The sport should have built its own destiny, instead it fudged and appeased other organisations and riders, meaning the fans got pi$$ed off watching guestfesf after guestfest and voted with their feet... And the third time? Covid... What a chance for a reset, thousands of die hards and thousands of even more lapsed fans eager for the sport to start up again... And what did we get? Well, the current situation clearly shows the answer ..

If it's only one league, why is there a question of Oxford running either Prem or Champ?

Spot on comment about there being an appetite for Speedway... At the NSS there have been two good crowds this year, yesterday and the PCMM... One being ran on a BHM and the other being ran early in the season with a top class field.. If those who attended, me included, saw enough in the product to attend more regularly then 2000 plus crowds would be the norm... Running on a normal Monday simply restricts crowds, weekend is "leisure time".. Running several meetings as "meaningless", as the play off positions are set in stone from May, simply restricts crowds... And running meetings when you know (well in advance) that riders will be missing, but happily replacing them with competitor's employees, simply restricts crowds.. It costs me over fifty quid for me and my lad as he works PT and has much better things to spend his money on, meaning we attend three, maybe four times a season.. Get it down to thirty quid for us both and it would easily be double figure attendance for us both... Personally, given the Mickey Mouse operating model, neither of us care who wins (like many others who sporadically attend), as the credibility of the competitions is almost zero, but we do love watching the racing at the NSS as it can be breathtaking... As you say, that disconnect needs to be sorted... They could start by running meetings on the best night for the fans to attend in the highest numbers.. Run with less riders per team to make supply exceed demand for adhoc and longer term replacements, which then brings credibility.... And set an admission fee that reflects the standing of the sport in the UK, and the 15 mins or so of entertainment that is actually on offer... The core product is still very watchable, the nonsense surrounding it doesn't do it any favours...

Re Flint exclusion. Flint lifted and this allowed Cook to charge under him entering the third bend. Flint was clearly not expecting Cook to come under him and lost it. Clear gap between them. Ref watched the replay several times and correctly excluded Flint. Watching in the main stand I don’t think a single spectator expected Cook to be excluded. Looked clear what happened.

Hope Lewi and Anders are better in Glasgow.

That's why I hated it, that and the Greenhall's lager. 😂

I was a regular watching Brum at the Wheels Project(Tom Evitts and Les Powell were definately promoting👍) and I can only remember Joe Owens'(how good was he?) tragic accident for Ellesmere Port Gunners in 1985.I don't remember much else tbh with my fading memory.Most folk who went then hated the place,but I quite liked it as it was in the shadows of St Andrews football ground.🤭

There's a joke there, but i won't 😃

What's nonsense? Both parts of the post make total sense to everyone but you .

Well, her decisions are often more barmy than biased.

Oddly enough the fall of the Berlin Wall opened up eastern Europe like never before and the rest is hisotry! You are right in so many ways in the late 90s and very early 90s the UK scene still was the top place to be now we are just the poor relations.

No he said Sweden but he's deleted it now for some reason.

As said by others on this thread, the decline started earlier, but without a doubt, Matt Ford caused the sport more problems than the contributors on this forum care to admit

Had the dog at the vets.... But not interested in replying anyway.....

Appreciate the response IainB! Clearly MikeBV didn't want to stand on any of his initial comments and reply glad someone did!

My gut reaction to 2026 is that it will still be a 3 tier structure. Specifically Chris Louis will cling on to the TV Money and GP stars like King Canute trying to stop the rising tide, he'll be supported by KIngs Lynn / Belle Vue and Sheffield, and enough pressure will be put on Leicester to remain in a "top tier" and if they have to, they'll go 5 team League with even more of the TV slice. I can't see Glasgow playing that silly game, the Facenna brothers have a clear goal and aim in terms of the GP / GP2 / International Fixture status of their venue and like Poole, frankly don't want nor need to play silly buggars with the egotists. I suspect Oxford will run Championship as their main team with the existing teams remaining in that leagu and no one going up nor down. Belle Vue / Edinburgh / Leicester / Redcar / Oxford / Kings Lynn / Plymouth and the standalone Kent Eagles will form a competitive NDL League if enough Riders can be found to service 8 Teams. I suspect that would be the max number for 1 league and don't think Scunthorpe / Sheffield will be back (If Workington / Mildenhall or any other side wanted to play NDL level, a geographical split may be x 2 x 5 yeam leagues with a top 2 in each playing off?) Hardly ideal but I think prizing the TV Money and GP stars away from those PL Clubs will only happen when there are 4 or less left to continue the folly!

Tolley is fine....he's just clueless but has money to burn....Rogers is the problem...clueless and doesn't put any money in...but he will expect you to stroke his over inflated ego and compliment him on all his hard work behind the scenes, whilst he plays Roy of the Rovers with the NDL set-up!

In the UK I’d agree. Not at international level, just bang average. Certainly riding for Leicester has helped him progress in the UK.

Actually it’s not rare, the rider circle is a very close community, yes there is the exceptions but on the whole they do respect each other and on the whole are all mates, you always want to beat each other especially your own fellow countrymen but it’s just racing, away from the track you find some even socialise together or train together and airports tend to be a bit of a gathering place for the international riders, at the end of the day they all share the same mechanics, tuners, flight organisers, sponsors and ultimately are all in the same game so yes respect is definitely there, I always respected everyone I was on a track with even the ones I didn’t like and it’s pretty much the same for all riders

One of the things I find hard to get my head round is Admission prices v Club Streaming.I realise Streaming was brought in to get some Revenue essentially from away supporters who would pay to see their Team when they could not attend.Which is fair enough, but why would you charge less for fans too watch the stream and more for Home fans to watch the same match .eg £11.99 for stream and £20 for Admission.The surely encourages home fans just to stay at home (especially if a family).I am assuming the Promotions are happy with the outcome of streaming though.Too me Streaming and Admission should be the same price.(just a personal opinion though).Should they be charging Home fans more is what I’m saying.

Because in many cases, emails sent to the BSPL should have really been addressed to the SCB. Often these concern rules, rather than promotion. So they are forwarded there, and replied to by the SCB.

Fines go to the SRBF don't they... so if Wright and Allen put a claim in for severe handbag whiplash injuries... all good 😁

if Glasgow are going well we might se the self releasing tape rubber bands again

I trust the co-commentator on BSN will receive a fine for 'enjoying' the scenes and therefore, apparently, promoting violence. Load of nonsense. If there were scraps (handbags) at every meeting, the terraces wouldn't be so empty.

That skirmish probably did the sport more good than harm. I quite enjoyed it myself as it took me back to the times when that type of thing was quite a regular occurrence. It certainly created huge interest.😃 It makes me smile when I see the authorities quote the rule book as it just makes me wonder where it has been hidden for most of the season.

Depends if Shovvy gets stuck at an auction again. Hope he tells us more about it if he does this time. Really interesting stuff.

For me, speedway's real decline began when they introduced such things at double point Tactical rides and 39 point points limits. I'm not sure when that was now. Maybe around 2000-ish? These, for me, caused a big reaction, and I remember going the following season and being surprised at how much crowds had gone down as a result. I don't think the sport ever really recovered from these "adjustments". The big irony with these, if course, is that it was Ipswich (the team that everyone now sees as the powerhouse strong side) that were very influential in such things being brought in because they were struggling with weak sides. Nowadays I struggle to get through a meeting on the TV. I'm sure that losing my team (Swindon) has a part to play in this, but I really do look at the sport on a Monday night and wonder why it is so boring. Is it just my own interest dropping off, or has it genuinely become that? I grew up loving speedway, and going to Swindon, Oxford and Reading where huge crowds would bait each other and the atmosphere would thrive on it. I guess I blinked and the World changed.

Annoys the hell out of me this does! And we get to see quite a lot of this with Drew Kemp at Leicester, even if you're not going full bore at the back you should at least be on the pace(ish) at the back, who knows what's going to happen to the riders in front during the rest of the race... it shows a really poor mental attitude.

I was there at 7:00 pm and programmes were sold out. Who would have thought that there would be increased demand for this meeting ?😲 Having said that they were giving out free racecards so kudos for that. I hope every Brummie fan that wanted a programme, got one. As a Wolves fan I'm not too fussed. The West Midlands is now a speedway desert. Who could have imagined that back in the 80's/90's ? Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope in that tracks like Leicester, Oxford and Workington have made a come back.

I'm almost certain that Peter Schroeck is a social experiment to see how inept a team manager can be before they get sacked. How can he genuinely stand there - with a smile on his face I'll add - and say the riders need to pull their fingers out but there's not much he can do about that. It's quite amazing to watch as a neutral, probably not as fun for Oxford fans.

Sadly, it is the fans who have caused the loss of international matches by us not turning up in sufficient numbers to make them profitable. We have also lost most of the big individual meetings due to lack of support caused in some cases by promotions reducing their costs with cheaper riders or running with only 12 riders instead of running a full 16 rider 20 heat meeting. Costs being reduced by those methods give the promotion a higher profit the first year but further reduce the attendance in following years which leads to more economies, further loss of attendance and then the loss of what used to be a well attended meeting. I can understand why the promotions did what they did as I suspect that the rise of Polish speedway meant some riders started asking for more money. At the other end of the sport, we often read how much we need a thriving Development league but such comments are often followed by the same correspondents saying that they don't want to watch Development league standard racing as they only follow professional team racing. I used to enjoy the international matches, both top level and junior level. Equally I can enjoy meetings in all three leagues run in this country. I have seen good and bad meetings in all three leagues. How the promotions get the sport back to what it was I don't know and I fear none of them have the cash backing to be able to run big meetings in half empty stadiums.