Bryce

We played a mini tournament with 5 players. Each player took a team and played all of the others over 15 heats in a round robin style. My Hackney Legends team won 3 and lost 1 match. Somehow my friend who has never been to a speedway meeting in his life managed to win all 4 of his matches. (quote of the night from him..."This Ivan Mauger bloke scored loads for me. Was he any good in real life?) All of the matches were quite close, the biggest winning margin being just 16 points, with several last heat deciders. The game play was easy to pick up after watching the videos on the website. By the end of the evening most heats were running very smoothly with no confusion for the players. As predicted, the non speedway fans enjoyed it purely as a strategy card game, and I as an actual attending speedway fan totally loved it. I'm working on getting the group together to play regularly in a league style competition. One delightful quirk for old Hackney fans. The only one of my team to finish a match with a maximum was the legend that was Michael Warren. I know it's only a game but that did make me smile. I always loved his battling style and he was taken from us far too soon.

Got my copy today. (Thanks Neil!) It looks excellent. I'll give the game a real test this weekend when I play it with some hardened gamers who have no interest in speedway at all.

Leisure games is a great shop, and they often take a stall to trade fairs. I'd also be happy to buy a copy, so that's 2 of us already. Any more takers? Maybe we could get 12 of us just on the forum.

To boil it down to the very basics : Each player has a hand of cards, some of which can be used to improve your position and some of which can be used to mess up your opponent's position. Using these cards it's up to you to play them strategically to achieve the aim of the particular game you're playing; in this case winning the speedway race. There are similar games for any genre you can think of, each with unique cards tailored to the theme of their game.

I imagine many of the thousands of attendees at Britain's gaming conventions have a similar opinion of speedway. i.e. Why be bothered? Fortunately, there's room in the world for both groups, and even for a few of us with a foot in both camps. If you're not interested in the product that's fine, but don't make the mistake of assuming that there's no market for this type of game. Many card based strategy games are available at specialist game shops across the country, and online.

I regularly play and purchase card based games such as this. Munchkin, Red Shirts, Chez Geek etc are all similarly priced to this product. You're paying for the playability and replay value, the concept, the artwork and so on. In gaming terms £18 is at the higher end; but not extortionate.

As much as we all here on the forum love speedway, I suspect in the world of Sky decision makers the GP coverage is an insignificant side issue. We can hope for a positive outcome, but let's not fool ourselves into believing Sky care what we think. If they can see a financially viable package they'll air the GPs. If not, they won't be weeping over less speedway.

I remember his season at Cradley. He always seemed to score 3 or 0 in any given heat

Congratulations to Chris, a totally deserving world champion.

That's one of the best fightbacks I've seen in 40 years of watching speedway. Well done ZG.

It still seems most likely that West Ham Utd will take over the Olympic Stadium. If that comes to pass, I'd imagine speedway would have almost no chance of using the venue.

Incredible crowd for a league match. Good match at that.

What's Gollob moaning about now? Something about the track?

what an awesome race between Balinski and Gollob

LOL it was rather. Pavlic looks very good against some top quality opposition.

Terrific meeting. Great effort from our boys, but the class team won through in the end. Holder took the booing in the spirit of banter and handled himself very well. As much as the anti Poole sentiment on the forum tries, nobody can truthfully believe that Holder and Ward are anything but great for speedway. They are the kind of showmen our sport thrives on. Well done Middlo's lads though. You did us proud. Just to add how wonderful it was to see the Rico racing logo on the GB kevlars.

And just when it looked as if the Turbo twins would take a 5-1 to nick it, Darcy makes a rare mistake and lets Pawlicki under him to turn it into a 4-2 and a drawn match. Great effort by Leszno, and a good match in general.

Watching Torun is an awful lot like watching Poole isn't it? I don't think Leszno have enough depth to pull this off without Hampel.

Speedway riders are made of steel. How many of us would have even got back on the bike after that? Darcy just goes out and blows them away.

horrid crash. but he looks ok now

The programme as a whole had a lot more in it than the normal Lakeside one, which was good, but the racecard was indeed woeful. There are worse ways to spend a sunny afternoon, but I must admit it wasn't the greatest meeting I've ever seen. It didn't help that the finishing order of the teams was blindingly obvious after the first batch of 5 heats. Darcy Ward could have fitted an engine to an armchair and still scored a maximum, he was so far ahead of the rest. The ref didn't help with some very odd decisions. Good on the Brits for giving it a go, but we've still got a long way to go to be competitive at this level.

Here are the details from tonight's match at Lakeside. Lakeside Junior Hammers 24 Mark Baldock 9 (Max) Martin Pearce 3+1 Jack Kingston 6 Adam Sheppard 4 Peterborough Thundercats 14 Niall Strudwick 5 Jamie Collins 1+1 Simon Pearce 5 Ben Holloway 3 Heat 1 - (re-run) Baldock, M Pearce, Strudwick, Collins (F, Ex) - 67.9 secs Heat 2 - Holloway, Kingston, S Pearce, Sheppard (f, rem) - 68.9 secs Heat 3 - Baldock, S Pearce, Sheppard (f, rem), Collins (f) - 67.5 secs Heat 4 - Kingston, Strudwick, M Pearce, Holloway - 66.6 secs Heat 5 - Baldock, S Pearce, Collins (f, rem), M Pearce (f, rem) - 67.2 secs Heat 6 - Sheppard, Strudwick, Kingston, Holloway (Ex) - Awarded.

I'd like to mention some stalwarts of Cradley Heath. Alan Grahame, Erik Gundersen, Simon Cross and Phil Collins were all part of the set up there for a very long time compared to the way riders seem to move around these days.

It was a confusing night all round. I had to laugh when we all shouted at Bob when he kept announcing the wrong team totals for a few heats after the 3-2 in heat 2. In the conditions I think all the riders deserve great praise for giving it such a good go. Sad to see the Hawks name going again, but I really do hope that Lakeside run an NL team next year. The only way British speedway can build itself up again is by giving as many opportunities to youngsters as possible.

Speaking as one of those Hawks fans, I could just about cope with Lakeside as being a "home" meeting. Rye House just isn't. I've no animosity towards the place, it's just nowhere near East London. It's a trip to the countryside for us. It will never feel like a home track for Hackney.