RobHowe

Yep, common knowledge and yet you can’t name the team….I’m guessing this is because you don’t actually know it. However I’m intrigued as why a fan of another team feels the need to venture into the Sheffield thread and criticise the way the club makes its team announcement for 2022. Have you nothing better or constructive to do with your life?

There you go again with the “everybody does” and yet you’re wrong (again). I love surprises and will happily wait for Christmas Day. Bit boring if you know in advance.

Still waiting for the Sheffield 2022 team mate - seen as it’s common knowledge I’m sure you can share it with me……

Season tickets don’t suit everyone. Not everyone can afford them. But they do work for many fans. At the start of last season mine was worth it’s weight in gold as I had guaranteed entry during the restricted months. They also provide a good source of pre-season income for clubs who have significant expenditure to cover before the first paying customer comes through the turnstiles.

Mate, this is a Sheffield thread. The local newspapers in Sheffield cover speedway. However thanks to the beauty of social media we can all now read local newspaper’s coverage of speedway from around the country.

So what is the Sheffield team for 2022 then? Seen as it’s common knowledge.

You don’t think the local press already knows? Maybe, just maybe, clubs want to control how their signings for the next season are made known beyond the bounds of this forum and those few people in the know? Say, for example, a big reveal - such as Sheffield have announced this morning? Just be patient, just because some people know already doesn’t mean you’ll see them ride any earlier than those that don’t know yet.

You’re aware that newspapers use social media extensively as an outlet for their content, right?

When do you open your Christmas presents? Two weeks before? And do you know what you’re getting before you open them?

Read the forum? All of it? Life is too short mate - way too much doom and gloom on here, and fans living in the past. Of course news leaks out, it always has done. But some fans just can’t wait to break news that they’ve heard or been told. These rumours spread and then take away any impact that the club might have wanted. Who knows, they may have planned a big PR reveal or a meet the team night? Personally I’m not bothered when clubs announce signings. But I think it’s their right to decide when and how they do it.

The information posted by Texom is dated 19th November - 2 days ago. As I rarely read this forum, presumably you can provide links and / or screenshots of other forms of social media where it was stated that Musielak was signing for Sheffield weeks ago? Personally I prefer the “old fashioned” way of waiting for my club to announce who they’re signing, rather than randoms posting on a forum. Until then it’s merely gossip. And let’s face it, as we all know, until you see a rider at the tapes in your team’s colours nothing is guaranteed.

Everybody knew? I hadn’t heard or read anything. And I doubt I’m not the only one. Speedway fans do exist outside the bounds of this forum.

Why should Sheffield or any other team change their plans for making announcements just because a third party makes a premature announcement - an announcement that was seemingly naive and possibly unprofessional?

I understand why some fans are upset at Lambert’s selection over Bewley, but there is - with the greatest respect - a huge difference between beating the likes of Danny King, Richard Lawson and Sam Masters week in week out when compared to competing with world class riders like Zmarzlik, Janowski, Madsen, etc. As has already been mentioned, Lambert is on form - he’s made the last 3 GP semi finals, his Ekstraliga average is approx 1 point per meeting higher than Bewley and over the last 4 Ekstraliga meetings Lambert scored 20 more points than Bewley. And he has experience at this level. Bewley doesn’t and the pressure of performing at that level could impact negatively on a young rider. As we saw last night, on track prepared for the home team, Bewley was still beaten by MPT, Scott Nicholls and Chris Harris. No disrespect to those riders, but as has been pointed out the track won’t be prepared as Belle Vue riders like it so any home track advantage will be very much reduced. Bewley didn’t win the British Final on his home track, so he’s likely to fair less well against much tougher opponents. Bewley is a great rider and given time will hopefully become one of the best riders in the world. But he isn’t there yet. it was a tough decision but Lambert is the right partner for Tai IMO.

I think it speaks volumes for where his head is probably at right now. Being low on confidence and taking abuse from some of your team’s fans is bound to have an impact on your performance. The more I see and read, the more I don’t believe Batch is deliberately not trying. There is something clearly not right mentally and maybe fans showing some compassion and support would do more for his performances than constant negativity and abuse.

Whilst not ideal, it may be possible, if you are able to get there early enough to position yourselves at the front, to use the area in front of the new Corporate / Hospitality Suite (OEC). From memory when I saw it a few weeks ago, I'd guess that the top of the wall that runs round the edge of the dog track is approx. at waist height, so someone in a wheelchair may be able to watch from there. Not ideal, but you'd be outside and wouldn't have anyone standing in front of you. Obviously the provision of designated areas for wheelchair users is the responsibility of the stadium owners and not the Tigers so I'd imagine they're pretty much constrained by what the stadium offers.

This.

Just as a point of order, there are female as well as male speedway promoters in British speedway. But how do you know that these men and women know so little about running speedway as a business? To help me understand your claim you're going to have to post some examples of this to show how they know so little. Presumably you can do this, right? "Most of the Sheffield crowd could see at the start of the season that Josh was carrying a very serious injury." Is this another fact? If it is then I'm obviously one of the small number of Sheffield fans who don't have a suitable medical qualification and who didn't have access to Josh's medical records. I simply based my opinion on the fact that Josh had been back in training and that the medical advice was initially that he wouldn't miss that much of the season. If most of the Sheffield crowd knew this wasn't the case why didn't they inform the promoters or management? Presumably you did though?

“The article in question was published in the matchday programme, which is a Sheffield Speedway publication. Although it comes with the usual disclaimers, it would be hard to dispute the fact that it expresses the bona fide views of the promotion.” It’s actually very easy to dispute this, as I’ve already done. It is your opinion that the views of the author in question represent those of the Sheffield promotion. Your claim is merely that. An opinion. You have provided no facts to support your statement. You also conveniently failed to answer a single question that I posed in my original response to your post. So, I’ll ask the first and most pertinent one again just in case you are able to answer it. You claimed that “The Sheffield promotion has taken the usual disgusting step of blaming the paying patrons for the team's current demise." I asked why it was the "usual disgusting step" in your opinion? I also asked when had they done this before? I asked if you could provide examples please as I've not seen any? So far you’ve failed to back that statement up – so if you can support this claim and you have it, then why not simply put up the evidence if it is, as you claim, the “usual step”? If you don’t or just can’t, are you not just as guilty of being “plain insulting” and should you not “withdraw the comment at once and apologise”? Surely you wouldn’t expect different rules and standards to apply to you? Would you? You then went on to refer to Sheffield Speedway as a “failing organisation” that was attempting “to deflect attention from its failure by blaming the "media." Firstly, I presume you have financial evidence of Sheffield Speedway being a “failing organisation”? Otherwise there’s no way you would have made such a bold and potentially defamatory remark is there? Perhaps you could share this information to back up your claim? You also claim that Sheffield Speedway is blaming the media. Now correct me if I’m wrong here but I didn’t see “blame” directed at any part of the media – whether it be locally or nationally. But then again you typed “media”. So surely you weren’t referring to yourself and the other true aficionados of shale as the media? Were you? If you weren’t, then who were you referring to as the “media” that Sheffield Speedway was apparently blaming to deflect attention away from the fact that it is a “failing organisation”? Despite the fact you seemingly don’t see an issue with what you post. You made reference to the author “calling us "clowns" and "abusers" and intimating that we don't know what we're talking about.” How do you know the article referred to you? Somewhat presumptuous don’t you think? Or maybe you have a guilty conscience? You claim, “as a commercial provider of sporting entertainment, the promotion's responsibility is to provide competitive sport which entertains.” I’d question the word “responsibility”, as I personally think it’s merely in their interest to provide competitive and entertaining sport. But I think you’d have trouble finding anyone, bar perhaps the person who stares back at you in your bathroom mirror, who wasn’t thoroughly and royally entertained last season. And I think if people were honest they’d say the same for the majority of the first half of this season too. The promotion re-signed / signed some exciting riders last winter, and whilst we were never going to be as strong as we ended last season, the team looked promising and competitive. Obviously over the past few weeks this has not been the case. And whilst I don’t doubt that you are disappointed, we all are, I’ll wager that the promotion are equally if not more disappointed. But that is all it has really been. A few weeks. A short spell of bad results. Nothing more. And whilst you claim not to be a conspiracy theorist, you appear to believe that something fundamental is wrong inside the club. You talk as though the promotion have deliberately gone out of their way to make the team uncompetitive and not entertaining over the past 4 weeks. Do you truly believe this is what they’ve done? Do you truly believe that any sports team would do this? Or are you merely just overreacting to a run of disappointing results? Watching professional sport is expensive. Sadly, not everyone can afford to do so. I’m sure most sports teams – perhaps with the exception of Premier League football teams – would charge their fans less if they could afford to do so. But the harsh reality is putting a professional sports team on the track, ice, pitch, court, etc costs money. And those costs are only going to go one way. I actually think £16 for speedway is very competitive. I rarely get change from £40 for a match ticket at Hillsborough, going to the Steelers would cost me circa £18 for a ticket and I'd probably have to sell a kidney to fly out to Pittsburgh and get a decent ticket to watch the Pens. So for me speedway is good value. In fact if I thought about how much I’d spent watching speedway, football, ice hockey and basketball over my lifetime I’d probably give myself an aneurysm. But that has always been my choice. I’m fortunate that I can afford to watch professional sport, but I know when I hand my money over that there are no guarantees. Ever. If I wanted to watch my team win every week I wouldn’t have picked the Tigers, Wednesday and the Pittsburgh Penguins as ‘my’ teams. Ok, so granted the Pens have had some good years of late, but when I first started following them they were horrible to watch. But they are MY teams. Win, lose or draw – they are MY teams. If they lose am I disappointed? Of course. Do I throw the towel in? Never. “….What we've witnessed in the past four weeks is not competitive sport…..it's demeaning and humiliating….” Demeaning and humiliating?! If you’re truly serious about this I’d suggest you give speedway and possibly sport a miss for a bit. As disappointing and frustrating as the past few weeks have been, sport shouldn’t leave you humiliated and demeaned. If a few defeats leave you like this I’d move on. Life is too short to let it make you feel like this.

I debated your point over the weekend on Facebook with another fan who had a remarkably similar argument to yourself. So I hope you don't mind if I copy and paste the replies that I made to his posts. "The Sheffield promotion has taken the usual disgusting step of blaming the paying patrons for the team's current demise." Your opening point is essentially that you believe the promotion blamed the fans for the team's performances in last Thursday's programme. Now without reference to the particular article that has caused you to say this it would have been difficult to identify where your argument was coming from as none, NONE, of the promoters who contribute to the programme did any such thing. As I pointed out to the other fan, the author of that piece is not one of the promoters. And he made it very clear that what he writes in his column is his opinion. So, and maybe I'm - once again - just being a bit stupid here, why is it necessary for you to portray that it was the promotion that wrote the article when in fact it was actually, and with the greatest respect to him, only one of the programme contributors? And why is it the "usual disgusting step"? When have they done this before? Can you provide examples please as I've not seen any? "Mr. Lomas....being grossly offensive to die-hard Sheffield fans...." Grossly offensive? Really? How and why is it offensive? It would seem that's its just you and the other fan that have taken offence to what I thought was an interesting and thought provoking article. As I mentioned to the other fan, in the past I wrote a similar column in the programme of another professional sports team in Sheffield, and I did this for quite a few years. Not once were my words & opinions even edited, let alone questioned. I set the agenda and I essentially wrote what I wanted. I'll wager that this is the same situation here, as many of the topics the author covers aren't based specifically on Sheffield speedway. If the promotion was 'influencing' the author then surely they would be all about Sheffield. So for me you're looking for something that isn't there. From your previous posts on here you, like the other fan, appear to have it in for the promotion and I've obviously no idea why, but I just think that if people aren't careful then the constant criticism and sniping that some fans seemingly enjoy handing out could ultimately have a serious impact on the future of speedway in Sheffield. "Contributors to THIS forum are true aficionados of shale: salt-of-the-earth supporters" That's a ridiculous statement that is just simply not the case is it. Not every fan uses social media - there are times when I wished I didn't! So are you saying that unless you do you're not a true fan? Honestly, is this what you're saying? The other fan with the same argument as you uses Twitter and Facebook - are you suggesting that his point is not valid because he hasn't posted it on here? I actually think you two would get along having the same views and opinions. The other fan seemed unconcerned about the potential impact of the actions of the fans attacking the promotion, the management, the riders, etc. He claimed that once the figures become unworkable then they’ll end and that it would be madness to continue at a loss as in any business. For me surely it's in the best interest of every speedway fan to do what they can to ensure that the figures don't become unworkable? To do what they can to help support and promote speedway in Sheffield? And to not look to destroy the club from the inside? From a very selfish and purely personal perspective I want to watch speedway in Sheffield for as long as I possibly can. Ideally that would be right up to the point at which I die or at the very least when I can no longer find anyone willing to take my dribbling, incontinent and incoherent body to Owlerton. (To be fair the latter probably isn't that far away.....) And I will continue to do what I can to ensure that this happens. As we all know, British speedway is in a fragile position and it needs as many people as possible to be working together and in the same direction to ensure it survives and ultimately prospers. And this is why I question the actions of those fans that either deliberately or unwittingly seek to undermine those that put their time, money and effort into running speedway. I fail see what they get out of it other than perhaps some perverse sense of satisfaction that they have contributed in part to the downfall of the sport that they purport to love.

That's one of the most disappointing things. Reactionary, heat of the moment stuff like that should really be kept to yourself. But when people see fit to post it on social media the danger is that it gets taken as gospel and the negativity then perpetuates.

You'd like to think so wouldn't you? Sadly, and for whatever reason, some people have to find a crisis or drama when there isn't one. This inevitably leads to overreaction on the scale that we've seen in recent weeks. Its seemingly not possible to just have a bad season these days - in any sport. There always has to be some sinister underlying reason or some conspiracy theory as to why a team has a bad run. Rumours are spread and people will naturally start to believe them. Thankfully Kyle has put these rumours to bed. The upshot is that we have had a very disappointing and frustrating few weeks. Confidence is obviously and very visibly low, possibly high expectation levels have contributed to this, but for whatever reason it just hasn't been working. And that is essentially it. No crisis, no drama, we're just having a bad run. It happens. In what are difficult times for the sport you'd like to think that every speedway fan would pull together and in the same direction by supporting their team, the riders and the promoters. Unless of course they want to take some perverse satisfaction from helping to bring down the sport that they purport to love.

I didn’t say that. I said winning everything every year would be boring. What would be the point in turning up if you knew you were going to win everything? I’d much rather watch Sheffield win by 2 points with a last heat decider than be 20 points up by heat 12 and watch the final few meaningless races. Give me close, entertaining and competitive meetings every week, even if that means losing the odd one.

Why is it not acceptable? Would you,rather the club ran a series of potentially loss-making meetings at the end of the season just to keep everyone happy? Obviously I’d much rather see speedway run as far into September as possible, but you can only work with the situation that you’ve got. And as I’ve mentioned already had it not been for the incredible weather we’ve had over the past few months (six rained off meetings last year against just one this year) - not to mention progressing further in the Shield and the KOC - we WOULD be riding in September. In fact we could well be struggling for free Thursdays, meaning we’d be looking to ride on other days of the week and creating issues with rider availablilty, etc. No doubt people would have started complaining about that too.

Your original point was that it had been a stop start season at Sheffield. I don’t see how that has been the case given the very few Thursdays that we’ve not had a meeting on. Are you still saying that it has been? As for other teams, I’m aware of that some them have had periods without a home meeting, but ultimately we will all have the same number of league meetings and we will all have a similar number of Shield and KOC meetings. So it’s not as if some teams will get considerably more meetings than others. Granted it’s not ideal to have periods without one, but ultimately every team will have a very similar number of home meetings.