kevin bass

He was fine last coz gotta paid max for Poole.

Lawson is now at No 1 or aint he riding now or summit🤨

A group of us used to sponsor Ben Howe when he first started riding at Ipswich, i actually bumped on Shaun Tacey a few wks back at a Mildenhall meeting and he still does grass track now and then.

Nigel Flatman emigrated to Oz and was still having the odd spin on the shale over there up to a few years back.

I personally used to enjoy the junior league racing, we had Howe, Tacey, Clouting and Lawrence Hare at Ipswich, and remember Spicer and Fairweather being up at Lynn.

Yeah Ellis rode well for Ipswich round Foxhall last season

Back in the day if a team ran R/R they nearly always had a junior rider named at No8, but then again what rider these days is gonna travel for a meeting on the off chance he gets a ride, and like been said in those days the majority of the teams had a junior team who rode in a fixture after the main match had finished, so the riders were already trackside.

Tbf even Doyle has upped his form round Belle Vue coz he wasnt always scoring heavily when he rode for Ipswich round there, but then again i suppose he aint got Kurtz/Bewley to contend with saying that.

We've just gotta except that speedway in the UK these days is a tinpot sport compared to how its ran in Poland and the money that can be earned riding over there, Poland its very professional, over here its Mickey Mouse.

They wont give up their rides in Poland unless they can get the same payment and perks with their Britsh clubs, which aint never going to happen.

The reality is that most speedway fans are retired/pensioners.

The biggest problem will be available riders to run the so called Premiership if Poland bring in the one league only in '27, not just all the riders that ride in the Polish leagues who ride over here, but also the amount of British senior riders who DU more often then not during the season at some point, their all getting on age wise and cant go on forever. Nicholls 48, Harris 44, King/Lawson 40, Cook 39, Barker 38, Wright 37, Kerr 36, to name a few. Yeah there's a few decent youngsters coming thru but not enough atm to replace those mentioned above when they finally retire.

No we deffo need more meetings rather then less, biggest problem i see is whilst having the top riders riding in the UK is great it means we always end up playing second, third or even forth fiddle to Poland, Denmark and Sweden and alike, and then have to squeeze in the UK fixtures around rider availability, it might all change if this Poland one league rule kicks in next season, and yeah the season does now start later compared to a few yrs back, but still amazes me that we have less meetings to fit in during the season these days but we still end up trying to fit meetings in at the end of the season Sept/Oct yet we've had countless blank wks during the summer months, but yet again that's due to rider availability and playing second fiddle to other countries.

This was always my problem when i worked shifts, mornings 6-2 were fine, lates 2-10 were a no no, and tbf a night shift 10-6 were sometimes a mad rush getting into work on time, the joys of shift work, luckily im retired so no longer a problem, biggest problem now is actually lack of fixtures with to many breaks in between meetings, back in the day Ipswich always had two home meetings a month, and more often then not 3 a month, now its all over the place and all kind of gaps between fixtures, you can see why regular fans drift away after a while.

It'll probably be rinse and repeat again and try and run the top league with 5 teams if Sheffield don't run, and still try and call it the Premiership when they'll be next to bugger all actual top riders available to ride over here.

Just put plenty of material on the track to suit the home riders, that'll help, oh yeah but then again the Leicester manager might moan yet again like last time and get the track altered coz it didn't suit his riders🫢

I post on there now and again, seems a shame not to at least look in now and again after all the hard work @IainB put in setting up the new site, on the plus side at least this site has improved since its been back online regarding adverts coz it used to craze me the amount of adverts popping up every time i looked in, and i haven't set up an ad blocker so fingers crossed it continues as it is currently.

Think it was mentioned on another thread that Lawson would be at No 1 at the next set of new averages.

Can't see it happening tbf, when Doyle became available to ride in the UK Ipswich weren't prepared to have him back in the team as it ment they'd have to make 3 changes to the team to fit Doyle in, well that's what Paul Hurry said apparently.

Doyle will just sign on for another month, he wont be available until Bewley is fit to return.

Obviously the new Forum was created whilst this Forum was down for a few days, just wondered how many are using it or actually aware of it, me personally i look in on both

It just proves the point that the aint enough out and out Number 1's available who want to ride over here no more for a full season, its no different to last season with what Birmingham put out as a team, there's enough Number 1's/ Heat Leaders for 4 or 5 teams but not for 6 teams and for them all to be competitive wk in wk out.

Needs to be moderated properly to stop the same few people having multi aliases and posting up garbage on nearly every thread, gets a bit boring after a while😬

This one went down for 3 or 4 days but obviously back up and running now, a member on here has started up a fresh forum so there's now 2 on the go, im signed up for both so'll see if people post on both or just on here as its back up and running again.

I've added the new site as thought this one was dead as it hadn't worked for a few days, have got the best of both worlds now lol