Leaderboard

Interesting article in this weeks Star written by Lukasz Chrzanowski on how the world’s richest speedway league is slowly killing the sport and highlights how Britain, Germany and Sweden are struggling and economically outgunned when in Poland a reserve is paid more than heat leaders in other countries. Whatever happens the sport in the UK needs to go its own way and offer the public what it can realistically afford and if that means starting again and building talent from within so be it. The top riders find it easier to move equipment around mainland Europe and mechanics can travel by road to most places so why add to the cost by racing in the UK and given the extra expenses riders financial demands will only go one way, the question would be how long can the sport over here meet those costs.

I'm heading towards my 50s and I'd love all that. Youth today are addicted to every day statistics. Gaming, sport, fashion, music etc are all statistic driven. Many under 30s are guided by statistics over 'the eye test'. Even falsified stats today are believed by a lot, governments knowingly issue false statistics on a regular basis. TV ads knowingly display false statistics. How many products do you see with "Voted No1 by the general public." It's another thing the Promoters Association are terrible at, hoodwinking the public. That old saying "Speculate to Accumulate" still rings true today, but in a different way. Just use Statistics. "British Speedway, Watch by 30 Million People Around the World." The public don't need to know that that's since 1932 🤫

100%.... But. All glaringly obvious... Yet zero has been done to act upon it... Instead of marketing nationally I remember seeing one club set up a decorator's table with club memorabilia on it, in the foyer of a local supermarket... In the Speedway Star this week there is an excellent article with Mark Lemon who mentions wanting to bring others with "broader skill sets" into the sport.. Let's hope, marketing is one of those skills.. The bottom line is hardly any riders will increase crowds by their appearances, (as has been proved since "The Stars" came back a few years ago), so to keep forking out hundreds of thousands in paying them, instead of redistributing this cash into marketing (which "may" grow the sport), is not a great business plan... You can develop the greatest product ever to have existed in the world, using nothing but the very best ingredients, but you won't make any money if no one has heard of you, or your product ..

They’d be better off with Martin Kemp or his older brother Gary. They would provide the half time entertainment aswell.

It isn't difficult to "talk yourself up" is it.... "Speedway riders in the UK can earn millions each season".. (You don't have to say its as a collective).. "British Speedway is Booming! With hundreds of thousands of fans attending Speedway meetings last year".. (Again, collective numbers).. "Record numbers attend the National Speedway Stadium to see the Worlds Best!" (Collectively over two nights, but it doesn't matter).. "British Speedway amazingly only used 198 Guests in 2025".. (Alright, maybe we'll give that one a miss)..

Something to bear in mind is the deeper repercussions of signing Jason Garrity. In Scottish soccer, when a couple of clubs tried to sign a very talented, but flawed player called David Goodwillie, the negative reaction didn't necessarily come from other clubs or supporters. In one case, a club was informed by the local council that, due to their announcement of signing him, the lease on their ground was to be terminated, another reaction came from major sponsors at another club withdrawing their funding. David Goodwillie has never been tried or convicted of the offence widely reported, but "The Court of Public Opinion" has decided football no longer wants or needs him. Might Garrity's future be ordained in the same way?

He certainly worked out the fastest way round Shielfield and decent both home and away.Most fans would like to see him back in future.

What about rider costs, tuning, etc, surely this must be addressed to look at the vicious circle of the pursuit of speed which affects wages and drains clubs finances ?

Could've featured Tolley with his Top Hat strategically placed. Bound to send sales soaring among a certain demographic

Could be a signing of biblical proportions then

I love the debate that comes around guests necessary evil etc etc & what the alternative is. Its not a necessary evil, Poland & Sweden run with out guests they use a squad system. Back in the day the old National League under the management of Stekesbury & co banned the use of guests. At the time the NL was a fair better & more professional outfit than the BL. Guests & doubling up come about because of the absolutely ridiculous operating model that the uk have gone with. If you go back to the 80s & early 90s every team had a junior team which meant most clubs had their regular 1-7 with them a back up of anywhere between 4-7 good junior/second half riders. If you were running in the NL basically you had a squad of 11-13 guys the juniors would be called in to the team to cover injuries. The promotors decided to bin that off reducing the number of available riders though lack of opportunities to race remember those juniors rode in their own league match’s each week. While every other ‘professional’ sport have invested in increasing their squad systems & opportunities to compete & train British speedway has done the opposite. There is a route out however that will take time vision & creative thinking. The out of control guest & doubling up system is a condition unique to British speedway brought about by the way the governing body has chosen to operate the sport. It wasn’t ever necessary!

Big difference between having some issues with drugs off track and ROBBING THE ELDERLY in their own home at KNIFEPOINT.

Drew was very impressive last year - a very noticeable improvement. I had been sceptical, but he convinced me.

Mr negative yet again

or... just that last lap will do for starters 😠

Kemp is the best rider available with the points remaining in my opinion.

It is said the way to winning is no last places and this Leicester team won't get many of those. I would think Drew at reserve would be a decent signing, yes he does have an attitude and get down on himself but he is a talented rider.

Yes, he does, just. Interesting that he won't be starting the season with a Championship team place despite averaging over 8.0 at that level.

Normally a draft ( daft 😛 ) fixtures schedule is released to the clubs, then tweaked if the club thinks any rider could be involved in official and Micky mouse FIM meetings etc. or some clubs avoid a certain date due to local stadium availability or a planned local event may have to be avoided

I like the look of this team, very solid without the top rider as number one, Fricke has gone to Kings Lynn but because of that they have weaknesses lower down, this could be the season Leicester win the title.

Bauhaus Ligan fixtures for 2026:

Bauhaus Ligan fixtures for 2026:

Blimey time flies lol

Don’t include him.

Is everybody going to let this name pass without comment?

No thanks.

Now that would be interesting if he was to throw his hat in the ring with NORA and challenge the status quo

Must admit it’s not really aimed at me as I’m happy with my programme and chatting to people nearby. Top of my head would be….. Stats. Home, away, overall, performance at a particular track. News, both local and international for our team of riders. Fixtures and tickets. League table. Race info. Transponder info, passing inc passing after B3 L1, match ups - past and present. Predict the result. Meeting, race, individual scores. Gate performance info. Replays on demand. Votes for ref decisions, best rider and other fun categories. 50/50 raffle available via the app. Car share/coach information for away trips. Ultra local weather forecasts with track webcam footage leading up to tapes up. Pre meeting interviews. Rider colouring pages for young and old. Some kind of speedway themed game, addictive if possible. Meat raffle.

Premier league won't be decided until the decision on team number 6 is made. Championship could be done now. National League nearly always last.

It was one thing they were starting to get a bit better at in recent years, announcing the fixtures slightly earlier. Guess the "upheaval" this winter has left the fixture planning til later and had a knock on effect.

Sorry accidentally quoted both comments before I read yours

Spot on... They have basically tied themselves up in knots by using short term fix after short term fix, rather than having any vision, strategy and ambition for the sport.. That lack of an independent, no vested interest, voice clearly being missed... They needed (still need), saving from themselves, as they lurch from sticking plaster to sticking plaster to cover major (self inflicted), wounds.. So many well meaning, passionate about the sport hobbyists, being in charge of, and self policing, a national professional sport, with so many widely different needs and wants from the team owners, can never work successfully... Hence it hasn't, and we are where we are.. Is it too late now? It is if nothing radical changes, and quickly...

Fans have always had an issue with their riders representing other clubs. The main issue of course is perhaps due to them potentially getting injured, doesn't diminish the fact though. The disconnect I'm talking about isn't the "Oh so and so used to come into the bar after meetings." It is simply being able to get behind a rider who represents your team and your team alone. It creates an identity. Riders should be allowed to carry on. But they should do so at one level. The level they are capable of performing at. The doubling up free for all (helped by the relaxing of the average conversion rate) dragged the standard of the top two leagues closer together because so many of the riders are shared. Those riders taking second tier spots has absolutely stood in the way of youngsters coming through. Maybe not directly but that is a consequence of the rule change. It has been squeezing the air out of development for almost two decades now and we're at a breaking point. The sad thing is that those riders now having an easy life also had a more defined path to the top as the gulf from Conference to Premier to Elite was a less abrupt one than the pathetic excuse we have for a third tier into the Championship as it is now. We now have a weaker top tier than we did 20 years ago but a much stronger second tier. That is a fact shown by there being Championship heatleaders who are also heatleaders in the Premiership. To use one of your old riders as an example, Tomas Topinka was an incredible second tier number one in the mid 2000s. He wouldn't have been anywhere near a heatleader berth in the Elite League at that time though. And if you wanted to watch Topinka you had to be at a Kings Lynn meeting. Even now Scott Nicholls is a shining example of the way it should be. He has one team at the level his ability allows him to race at and still be competitive. The raw product draws fans in. Once you fall in love with that it is the bureaucracy and stupid convoluted rules that is a turn off, not the state of a stadium or what music is being played between the heats. I'm not saying these aren't issues, they are but the real issues come from the way the sport is run. There are some stadiums in Poland that are falling apart, they play the YMCA three times a meeting but the places are still banged out to the rafters. Yes, the standard of riders may be better but the real difference is that they don't deal in half the BS we do here.

At the end of the day, we all want what's best for British Speedway, we've all got workable idea's. The biggest problem we all have & see is that the Promoters Association ain't even trying anything at all.

I could be wrong but that would only be the case if in some way his offenses were directly related to the sport ,also it would not really look good from the point of rehabilitation of an offender . We have to accept that he has been punished ( whether you agree with that is another matter) from everyone's point of view if he is able to make a fist of being a s/way rider surely that can only be a good thing. You can ostracise him because you feel that's what he deserves but his best chance of not re-offending is to be gainfully employed( s/way appears to be the best occupation for him ) and occupied in general as much a possible ,no one can guarantee that he will succeed but at least there would be no excuses for him not doing so .

Great post . Your views make total sense. We all know the speedway fan base is a rapidly ageing one and to attract younger ones to the sport , they would need to feel an attachment to the team that they are watching. That they identify with the riders in their team , the same riders week in week out and choose their favourites. In return those riders will feel the attachment to the club also, rather than riding for two or three teams ( if a guest) . Things need to be professional in that sense and not the free for all that has ruined our sport.

Logistically it isn't an issue. Especially if you are a rider wanting to line your pockets without the inconvenience of having to be good enough to be asked to ride in Poland. The problem is deeper than that though. Starting with it causing the disconnect between fans and the riders who race for their team. Ideally riders should have one club, having another club overseas is borderline acceptable. Ideally that wouldn't happen either. A lot of top tier riders have ended up with second tier clubs due to a relaxation of rules (doubling up numbers allowed and average conversion rate) 15 odd years ago. They've then hogged the team spots and stopped other riders from racing at second tier level and thus reaching a competitive standard. That is directly to blame for the lack of good enough riders now. To top it all off, most of them are now in their mid thirties plus and when they retire, which they'll have to some day sooner rather than later, leave a massive void in both leagues. These things hurt Speedway's credibility. As does guesting, which isn't a necessary evil, it's just an evil. It makes the sport look amateurish in the extreme to Speedway fans, let alone someone who may be a newcomer to the sport. The sport has to look credible to keep teams active, to help new/returning teams get back on track, to try secure another television deal and ultimately to draw in new fans. All these things that look stupid to outsiders (because they are stupid) need to be removed from the sport. For the good of the sport.

Wow only just caught up on this 😮. That would be a massive shock (and risk) if Woffinden was back to start the 2026 season in Tigers kevlars. I would have thought Chris Holder, Pickering and Etheridge would have been the final 3 pieces of the team jigsaw, sure we’ll find out in coming days/weeks what route the promotion have gone down.

Don't laugh, one year the Australians staged a Tasmanian State Championship purely to generate visa entitlements, and held it somewhere in Victoria (or New South Wales).

MPT surely will get a max at Edinburgh.😁

How can anyone be getting excited for a 5 team league is beyond me

Averages are calculated to 3 decimal places, and rounded to 2. Cook's rolling average is 207 points from 101 rides = 207/101 x 4 = 8.198 If he was a foreigner, 8.198 would round to 8.20 As he's British, he gets a further 2.5% reduction. 8.198 x 0.975 = 7.993 which rounds to 7.99 (But even if it was 8.00 he would still fit)

They'll never learn... cannot understand for the life of me why anyone would sign Craig at this point. An absolute liability, completely unpredictable and has let down clubs year on year. Good luck Workington, I suspect at somepoint this season you'll need it once Craig disappears...

Cook`s signing will end one way and one way only. Recent history tells us everything you need to know.

So it's Craig Cook. How often will he turn up to meetings?

Dan Thompson joined the team at Tapes 2 Flag podcast and discussed his thought's on joining the Monarchs amongst other things

May have nothing to do with the team structure that statement though. Depends whether you class the signing of Cookie as exciting news ? Probably divide opinion that one.

That’s a decent Team .IMO will take a good Team to beat them at Home.

Powerhouse line-up now that Il capitano is back in the fold.

So it's a sad farewell to speedway at Perry Barr. The local council/lease holders couldn't wait to get the bulldozers on site and have already erected a wall around the site to keep the travellers out. Will we ever see a return of the the red B or will it be left in history as what was a great sport. Although I wasn't a long time fan, I've had a few good years going there and working there and meeting many people whose club this was. To them this was their whole world, who spent many many hours and years trying to keep it going. In the end it just wasn't to be but, better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. So farewell brummies wherever you are until we meet next time around.