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The anti-Poole rhetoric on here is as predictable as it is disappointing. The Poole management put together a team, and a track, designed to provide their loyal supporters with a winning team, but not just at home but away. I first went to Poole maybe 25 years ago and thought the racing was largely processional then but realised that, as long as it was Poole riders leading the procession, then the home support was happy. Matt Ford has a winning mentality and that shows through with both team and business success. His only year of losses was when he was forced to run on Thursdays and he found the resolution to that. He has proved he is not afraid to run in the top league. And often win it, so the decision to drop a league was sensible not cowardly. For too long, British speedway has supported the weakest teams and where has that got us? Dwindling crowds, fewer tracks and increased prices. The sport needs more teams like Poole who will improve the product not keep reducing what’s on offer. Which brings us to Glasgow, the only other team in the league who sees the sport from a business perspective. Their route has been to improve the customer experience by investing in the stadium, the team, the track. They must have the lowest average age of supporter though there’s still plenty of room for the long term fan. With the number of children attending, I’d guess the average age is closer to 40 rather than 60+ at many tracks. And that approach is paying off with the team consistently towards the top in performance. And, in my view, if you had to rank what is important to a regular supporter, then performance beats racing. I don’t support those that say they only want to see good racing - not if it means your team is regularly beaten you don’t! You only need to look at the crowd levels this year at tracks perceived as providing good racing but who’ve regularly lost at home. From a neutral’s perspective, these are the two teams that deserve to be admired, maybe even envied rather than being attacked. Both provide a product their supporters want and both see dividends through the turnstiles. If only there were more like them

The best deal is the one that gets the sport to the largest number of non speedway fans. But how to achieve this? My opinion is that the sport is not suitable for live TV but ideal for a hour long, prepack, magazine type programme. You focus on the best races from a couple of meetings with additional races that are talking points from the previous week. In a 52 minute programme (plus 8 minutes of ad brakes which is the maximum allowed) as the spot ruling will not be applied to speedway due to viewing figures you should be able to cover this. I would get BSN to prepare it and offer it prepacked to Channel 4 or 5. Being on a FTA channel but as highlights will not impact on people attending a live meeting as much as the present deal does. And you stand a chance of attracting new fans as its not behind a paywall. The key is to get a broadcast (TV) partner as a streaming service only engages existing speedway fans.

If Poole win overall, then Glasgow fans will give credit where credit is due and congratulate them as deserved winners. I was at Poole on Wednesday and had great chats with the NID crew, I hope tonight's meeting is a cracker, befitting of a grand final and no matter the outcome, a good time has been had by all. Regroup and go again next season.

Glasgow won the "Entertainment Championship"... Far more important in a pro sport to win that. Like winning the "fair play award" or "the most improved player" in football...

Stop moaning. They do it to win - and who can blame them. Their fans are happy, proved by the good attendances. Why should they pander to the whim of away supporters?

The bottom line is this... Speedway allows a rider of any team to ride for a competitor in the same league... Who can then score enough points to win that other team the meeting... With that victory ultimately, potentially preventing his own team from qualifying for the play offs.. Meaning that his teams fans and sponsors, (who have supported the club financially all season), his team mates and even himself, miss out on the most important part of the season... Allowing such a situation to exist as part of your operating model would make the sport a very hard sell to mainstream media and sponsors from outside the sport I would suggest ..

I actually thought it threw up some interesting racing. Again it looks better being there to see it live rather than on tv. The control some of those lads had for their experience level was superb. Especially as it’s the first time most of them had riden Foxhall competitively. Thir attitude & willingness to attack the track certainly shows up some of the pro riders attitude.

Well commiserations to all the Tigers fans, you must have believed the force was with you come heats 15 & 16. But Zac and Lawson's class came to the fore. Cruel to have a looser in such a great contest.

Speedway has won tonight.

Was lucky enough to be at a recording of the new Mastermind series. Clive Myrie ( question master): What can't speedway riders do at Poole Speedway? Contestant: Pass. Clive Myrie: correct.

Glasgow fans moaning about another track? Well i never. However did the sport cope until the panacea racetrack at Springburn was born? Some of the Tigers -appear to have become the self-appointed protectors of ‘proper speedway’. They need to get over themselves a bit.

A brilliant meeting for the neutral, a heart pounder for Tigers and Pirates fans. Glasgow did what I expected them to do and started to take control of the meeting until HT 15 when their momentum stopped. After seeing Howarth looking so rattled in the pits after finishing last in 15 I thought surely he would be replaced. A 2nd and 3rd repeat in the super heat would have been enough but Cook and Lawson finished in style. Much has been said about the first leg track conditions, but why on earth would Poole set up the track to suit Glasgow? First look at Ashfield tonight before the meeting was as predicted, outside chopped up and super grippy for Harris. Nobody would have expected anything less. I rarely post these days , but it is always a pleasure to look in every now and then and enjoy reading the displeasure of the Pirates continued success from the anti Poole brigade. Up the Pirates

Commiserations to Glasgow, what a fight they put up and took it the wire. Bomber was on another level tonight apart from heat 16. Well done to the Pirates. The meeting swung in a different direction during the night but Poole are the 2025 league champions. Fourth time in five years.

One better actually went to witness in person, meeting didn’t disappoint neither did the result and faces that followed.

A tense, close, dramatic tie. And once again Poole prove themselves the 8th best team in Britain, just behind Birmingham.

Would agree.Zach Cook was the Poole hero IMO.

Gavan, give it a rest mate. Your constant diatribe anti Poole is geting tedious.

congrats too Poole Lawson cook did their job

Congratulations Poole, what a meeting though

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!! Fully deserved!!!!!!

This final deserved a super heat in fairness

Proper final this

He’s dangerous, going to seriously hurt Someone one day. Can’t just pass someone without brute force.

You shouldn’t gaslight people who just want exciting speedway Michael.

Great post... I watch most sports now on YouTube with around 15 to 20 mins highlights packages... Really got into Baseball this year, and now a massive Dodgers fan!!! Sitting through 2 hours worth of TV to watch less than 20 mins of racing doesn't really work for me nowadays... A highlights package could run 30 mins, and could even show every race, and get some detailed pre and post match nterviews with some of the key riders on view.. My lad is 22, and daughter is 27, and they rarely watch "live" TV programmes due to their busy lifestyles, so they use "catch up" to watch when they can, and binge watch series.. For me, the sport needs people involved from outside the "Speedway Bubble" as they seem almost brainwashed into doing the same old, same old, "there is no other way", often ludicrous, operating model... In house streaming only appeals to the converted so ideally the sport will get itself strongly on line DAILY on Tik Tok, Instagram, YT etc, and use the riders personalities, not just racing, to keep the sport in potential punters awareness and viewing algorithms... 30 mins to an hour a week on any of BBC, ITV, C4 or C5 can only move the sport forward quicker than 2 hours on TNT or SKY, or BSN... To bring great marketing people, and sponsors, in from "outside" requires the sport to have a huge amount of greater recognition and awareness than it has now... Get that fixed and, given the very low starting point fanbase wise, just an initial 10,000 extra punters a week interested by what they see online and/or on TV, would be "huge" for the sport, and provide great momentum to build it further. ...

But then Poole don't charge a premium for seating or parking.

I hadn't seen him properly but he was certainly impressive. Especially when he almost lost it. Must say Ingram impressed me as well but seemed to run out of steam, he was very aggressive

Shale is expensive.

Even though Warner/Discovery/TNT are bigger than all the competition! Personally I'm not sure that full, live speedway meetings on any channel - mainstream or others - is the way to go in order to attract more people to actually attend meetings? A Well-produced highlights package once a week, including a regular 'where-to-watch next week' slot would surely generate more interest.

Just a reminder for those with short memories and /or little knowledge of Glasgow speedway 2025. Glasgow went for 7 UK born/based riders to minimise disruption to their team and fixtures. Sadly the signing of Ashton did not work out and they had to look for another 5.0 rider. The only option was to go abroad and we signed Villads. We knew that his Danish/Polish meetings would take priority but in theory that only meant probably missing an away fixture at Poole, Oxford and possibly Workington. In the end he missed 6 away meetings 3 of which were also missed by Dan. You can't legislate for riders being called up for FIM/European meetings, or Polish meetings being rained offf and being re-arranged, and/or being injured. He is an entertaining, popular young rider as is Dan and I'm sure all Glasgow fans hope they stay with the club and continue to provide entertaining racing both home and away.

I spoke to him this morning and he said he had planned on riding in the UK next season, but changed his mind after last night. He said he’s not flying thousands of miles to play follow the leader. He said he wants to entertain fans. He also said tell LisaColette to stop talking rubbish in the Poole v Glasgow topic. He then said Ben Cook buys his race suits from Build-A-Bear.

Heartbraking to lose after clawing it back to equal but incredible effort from both teams. 2 equal teams fighting it out over 30 heats and it goes to a golden heat, either team deserved the win but well done to Poole for getting it over the line. Villads engine failure could have been the decider for us but Lawson's and Tobi's exclusions could have easily went the other way so cannot complain. Track took a few heats to warm up but really picked up towards the end, coincidentally coincided with Bomber starting to miss the gate 🤔 Both captains put in true captains displays tonight as well, great riding from both of them. Hard to say if it was a mistake keeping Kyle in the golden heat, Dan looked a bit slow in heat 12 and Villads had an engine failure in his final race. Could have used Leon but he rides the exact same line as bomber wants so they might have gotten in each others way. Hope some of the tension in the stadium made it through on stream, think the fan's heart rates were all higher than the riders.

I never realised you did irony!!?

Is that the we have the fairest track trophy? 😂 Certainly ain’t one of the three that was up for grabs. congrats to the pirates.

FTG . Forever The Greatest ?😁.

Pot kettle black

Well done Poole, can’t say they didn’t deserve it, fantastic speedway from both sides, great nights entertainment

What a great meeting for the neutral

Harris man. What a guy

What a great advert for the sport whatever the result Surely the Poole fans can see the huge difference between the 2 legs

Been great final for the neutral this.

Racing hotting up now. Better than Poole

Uncalled for.

Don’t forget the (and this isn’t Tigers related really but just because it was them) ’Glasgow are the real champions as they finished top of the regular league table’

Love BSN putting the boot in about the lonely racing line at Poole. Superb from the platform.

And it was as pointless as it can be given the guaranteed result -can't understand why people would bother watching.

No what i meant was 7 riders plus Rushen who is obviously above at national league rider

Is this goodbye to Abi? There’s always a silver lining.