torpointfanatic22

Come off it fella, this is a forum for opinions, people are allowed to voice whether they think a rider is good, bad or indifferent and who they may or may not want to see don their race jacket. It's incredibly sad that tracks go to the wayside, it's happening far too often and I feel you and the other Diamonds fans as I do the Robins, Brummies, Bees, Eagles, Racers, Panthers, Hammers et al but this 'just be thankful you have a team' stuff is really dull and adds nothing to the conversation.

Perhaps I have and lets hope he brings us some great surprises. Successful sides have a history of keeping meetings close(ish) away while winning at home. Last season we lost two meetings at home in the league and that probably cost us a playoff spot. We also lost half our away matches by 12 or more points that cost us bonus points. The top 5 suggested is worse than what we had last season imo (and forums are all about opinions at the end of the day). We're always going to have meetings where riders have off days or we take a pasting against a very good side at their place but my view is the riders being suggested have had their day (in a number of the cases) and we need riders who can compete and win on any track and ultimately improve their averages. Take Scotty for example, top bloke, great rider in his day and can still pull out a top performance. Brilliant at home but his away average last season was 6.52 and he was getting beat by reserves away from home, that isn't acceptable from a number one, it just isn't.

Oh of course we can, it's a bit of fun, hence we call it silly season, and if we want to all be realistic we can be, but we're fans and lots of fans will like to talk about the team they'd like without looking at the details behind it all (that's the managers job).

If true, it's a really poor side and will show that Garry has forgotten what a winning side looks like. Year after year we see the teams that make the playoffs or go onto win the league find a way to improve their overall team average from the start of the season to the end. Poole put over 5 points on their team average last season, Scunny over 3 points. What a shock they made the final. In that team you have riders with massively inflated averages due to home form (Nicholls and Barker especially) and regression. We need improvers, I appreciate that's hard to come by. Love Scotty and Barker is great at Plymouth but it's time to freshen it up. Batchelor is a shrewd move as he rides Plymouth well and Thompson is slowly getting better. Away from that I'd leave the rest. If we could get Thomsen at reserve then I'd be inclined to give him a shot but not in the main body. I don't know enough about Foord but he's been around a while and still on a 3.38 average tells me he's unlikely to all of a sudden improve massively. I'd quite like us to take a look at a couple of lads who Oxford won't be having back in Wood and McDiarmid. I think both have improvement in their starting averages and have showed flashes at Plymouth to show they could dial in.

That's a shame as I thought Klima showed some promise and was value for some improvement next season having seen all the UK tracks now. I'm sure plenty of reasons but a shame that both he and Anze, who we brought in and gave them their first full year to look at the tracks will now move on and other clubs will likely get the benefit.

That's some long tail Oxford are going to have. Very, very good top 3 but they're going to need some serious luck with improvements at the bottom end.

I can only hope you're wrong.

He's an interesting one as is Klima. Both have come in had their first looks at UK tracks and done okay. Klima better than Anze but you'd think the club has thought longer term with them so perhaps one or both will return. The questions are, can they improve on their starting averages and are they affordable with flights etc?

Very true, the intrigue between top heavy vs all round strength often made things really competitive. I think even more so, having strong reserves will be key. If you look at Oxford having Masters and Brennan for example, they're likely to be weak at the bottom end.

Respectfully that's getting battered away from home. Granted they should be pretty good at home but a playoff team that isn't.

All well and good but riders won't wait for Plymouth with the current uncertainty and then if we put out a substandard 1-7 the excuses will come. Hopefully the air fence can be secured quickly to allow us to start signing riders. Looking at averages assuming we are back at the tapes I'd hope we could get Thompson back, I think he'd be 5.92 after reduction. Could we tempt Dan back to Plymouth (7.55)...? I'd love to see Jason Edwards at Plymouth, with reduction I believe 6.28 would be a value average (dare say he's bound for elsewhere but would love to see it). I'd go nowhere near Barker on that average, he's never getting close to that next year. Tobias Thomsen was supposedly guaranteed a spot after his horrible injury, would he get a reduction at all for missing the season? If we've learnt anything from last season we need strength at reserve. Grmek back maybe? I think Klima could also improve but then there's the cost of airfares etc. Will be interesting to see where we go.

Quite! He’s not just been lacking points but miles off the pace. Whalley was far more competitive on Wednesday. He needs to sort himself out quickly.

No question they are but Nicholls shouldn’t be beaten by those two on any track

Nicholls has been embarrassing, with no King we would always have struggled but losing to Harrison and Ablitt is shocking. To be fair it was a massive mistake giving him the tactical. Tate has been our best rider along with Thompson

Ahhh, if ever a post reflected a nickname...Respectfully that's rubbish. The impact on his confidence finishing that far back in every heat can't be good for him and he's 26! It's not like he's a teenager who is upcoming, I'd argue 26 is far too old to be classified as a rising star anyway. Can't fault Tom's efforts and his professionalism but at this time he's clearly not ready for this level of racing. Hopefully a focus on NL for him will help him potentially secure a Championship place in the future. As for his replacement Ben Whalley, it's a brave shout bringing in an NDL 2 point rider straight into the Championship even with the amount of points he's scored. Anyone know much about him from his Edinburgh form? Either way got to be worth a try!! Good luck to him.