Humphrey Appleby

So in other words, a reversion to pretty much the original WTC format...

I think I must have missed that regular GP in Sydney... You could also say that BSI have taken the sport to the well known destinations of Krsko, Daugavpils, Malilla, Gorican, Terenzano and Vojens. I know they're places I always dreamed of visiting when I was growing up...

Every 3 or 4. Only the GPs in Britain, Poland and Sweden/Denmark get serious crowds.

At the risk of you accusing me of making bizarre claims again, the FA Cup winners were indeed seeded to the Final the following year in the early years of the competition. Hence the name 'Challenge Cup'.

You don't have qualifying, pitstops, strategies, or 'celebrities' wandering up and down the pit lane. You certainly also don't have the backdrop of exotic locations in speedway...

Quite aside from that, it's just simply boring seeing the same 15 riders that many times. There's no variety, and the SGP lacks the extra dimensions of F1 and MotoGP to keep it interesting. I make no secret though, that I find individual racing to be one-dimensional and that it should only be an adjunct to league racing.

If you consider that 200 quid then is equivalent to about 700-1000 quid today, the current prize money isn't really any better by the time you've deducted accommodation and travel expenses. However, times change and no-one's prepared to work down t'pit for thruppence ha'penny any more. The real issue though, isn't so much the teams that are successful in the WTC, but the ones scraping around at the bottom. Even more so for the ones starting in the preliminary rounds where the prize money is pitiful.

Obviously no shortage of money in Wales in these chastened times... http://new.wales.gov.uk/publications/accessinfo/decisionreports/culturesport/2011/5187738/?lang=en

Pretty difficult these days, as there's either an F1 or Moto GP virtually every week!

Well I'd argue the 'interest outside the sport' is mostly the fans who 'used to go to speedway' and drifted away. I daresay the SGP has attracted some new fans, but nothing to write home about judging from the crowds and type of sponsors it attracts. With respect to World Finals being boring affairs, well some were good and some were bad, but some of the latter ones were quite decent. I've quite honestly seen far more boring GPs, and without the excitement of following your favourite riders through the qualifiers. I don't suggest a return to that format, but neither do I swallow the propaganda that the SGP has been so wonderful for the sport. As to your suggestion that we all still watch it so it must be okay, well at one point it became so boring that I didn't watch a single GP in 2009.

Polish teams are well known (notorious) for insisting their riders miss foreign meetings if they have important domestic meetings coming up. With any FIM meeting though, if you accept to ride, then you have to ride otherwise you'll be suspended from all meetings.

The difference is that his Polish team can likely withdraw him from other domestic fixtures at will, whereas they can't from GPs as they take priority.

They'd likely use the classic 7-team, 21-heat format, just the same as they reverted to the old 16-rider, 20-heat format for the SGP.

If it was worth their while, there would be no problem finding countries to compete. That they're seriously suggesting reverting the SWC to a glorified pairs competition, shows just how much the FIM and their partner have taken the sport to the next level. With respect to team sizes though, they could run a 4TT format with 4-rider teams.

Could be all sorts of reasons. Long summer nights, shorter working hours, fewer competing sports in the vicinity of the tracks, easier to reach the tracks (try driving on congested British roads during the week), cheaper prices, and so on and so forth...

Perhaps they don't want him getting injured.

I think the BEL could actually run all its meetings on a couple of midweek days, but the reality is certain days are just not good for crowds in some places. The idea of running at midweek tracks in GP weeks and weekend tracks on non-GP weeks also wouldn't work as you'd need an equal split of tracks, and of course the weekend tracks still need to race against each other at some point. The loss of 12+ prime weekends has been greatly detrimental to British speedway, even if it's not the only reason for the decline.

Motorcycling Australia (formerly Auto Cycle Council of Australia) claims a foundation date of 1928. Indeed, MA's own website indicates speedway was the first form of professional competition, so it's not beyond the stretch of imagination that a federation was formed to regulate speedway or whatever it happened to be called at the time. ACCA affiliated directly with the FIM in 1975, so presumably it previously affiliated through the ACU as a national club.

With the exception of maybe 1 or 2 GPs, I'd have thought the Polish League has better crowds many times over. Ultimately though, there's a limit to the number of times people will want to watch the same old riders. Team racing not only provides variety over a season, but also provides continuity year-after-year as riders come and go. Team racing has not been well promoted in recent times, but ultimately I think the SGP will reach saturation point. That was the lesson from the very early years of speedway, and whilst some are dismissive of the past, some things remain constant.

A lot of things seem to bore you.

Whilst I'd agree we are where we are, speedway is one of the rare things where it was genuinely better at times in the past. The assertion that competition is tougher nowadays is quite honestly nonsense, and whilst the top riders today would undoubtedly have succeeded in yesteryear as well, some of the riders currently in the SGP would probably not even have been heat leader status in the old BL. Alright, so what? Times change and we sometimes have to move on, but when the hype and self-promotion is stripped away, what has the SGP actually done to advance the sport?

Undoubtedly, and several FIFA officials are quite clearly corrupt. However, many millions still filter down to the grassroots of the sport despite that. They currently pay something like GBP 1.4 million per year to the FIM, although the FIM pays the prize money from this. BSI's reported profits a couple of years ago were around GBP 1.6 million on a turnover of GBP 9 million.

It wouldn't solve any of the issues related to the current SGP, and having two 'world championships' would dilute the value of the title. It would end-up like boxing where there are so many world titles that no-one can take any of them very seriously. A knockout world championship would just add more dates to the calendar, wouldn't improve the prize money, nor would address the issue of money flowing out of the sport. I would agree that the SGP needs to have a more open qualification process, but that could be achieved in other ways.

I doubt international footballers lose money playing in the World Cup (except by gambling it away), even if their earnings are less than for their clubs. It's a reasonable point with respect to the Olympics, but that's a single event once every four years, not 12 events every year. It's still not a reasonable comparison though, because both the World Cup and the Olympics are run by their own governing bodies for the ultimate benefit of their sports. The participating national associations make money, and surpluses are distributed to other associations that are not directly involved.

Riders realistically need to know whether they're taking part in the SGP in advance so they can make logistical arrangements and find sponsors. The national leagues also need to know whether they're riding so they can decide whether to sign them or not.