Humphrey Appleby

I can't understand why people are thinking this is so complicated. How do they think it works in F1 (answer = one transponder located in standard position at front of car, and backup transponder located in standard position at back of car*)? Just put the transponder in a standard position on the front of the bike, most likely under the fork cover. The difference in positioning from bike-to-bike will be millimetres, but will have no consequences for timed qualifying because it'll all be relative. For racing, if there's an extremely close finish, most good timing systems have an option for a photo finish which I think is determined by a beam across the track of some sort. So if there's any discrepancy because of minute differences in the positioning of transponders, that should be able to sort it out, and is also what happens in F1. Obviously in a race, the clock needs to start when the tapes go up (or when the green light goes out if that's used). The race begins at that moment, not when a rider crosses the start line (which potentially they may never do) - it would be utterly daft to base the results of a race on how quickly someone rode around the circuit if they finished behind someone else. * It's not unknown for one of the transponders in an F1 car to fail, so sometimes times will only be recorded from the rear transponder.

There obviously are teams (normally ex-Football League) that can command decent attendances at that level, but it's really only a small handful. Look at the average attendances of other clubs in that league and they're far more akin to speedway ones.

It's not entirely their fault as some things have been beyond their control, and the sport lacks influential patronage as leverage. And speedway has suffered from changing lifestyles and interests along with many other businesses. But promoters can be blamed for collectively failing to control rider wages which are probably the biggest cost and are something they absolutely can influence.

It happens a fair bit at non-league level, where some glory-hunter throws money at a club to climb the pyramid, despite the fact it's never going to be sustainable once they stop subsidising the club. Almost unheard of at Football League level though because generally there's more history and sustainable interest behind the clubs there, plus there's arguably more due diligence checks. But even the top level of British speedway is probably equivalent to only the 6th tier (Vanarama League North or South) of English football these days.

I'd guess a speedway club could legally be run as a sole proprietorship. The designated promoter does not necessarily have to be the owner of the club, so this is just defining that promoter is a compulsory role. The text could be better constructed, but it does make sense in a roundabout way. Of course, the lack of consistency over the board members is just sloppy.

In football, there's almost always another sucker/gloryhunter who'll come along and pay off the debts of the previous sucker/gloryhunter.

Transponders are long overdue. Race times are not all that important in speedway, but if you're going to record them then it's ridiculous that speedway is still using old fashioned methods. Transponders are also advantageous for determining close finishes though, and would allow unreliable starting tapes to be done away with. As for 'qualifying' in speedway - pretty pointless. Speedway isn't about lap times, but position in a race, and the audience knowing that a rider has gone one-tenth quicker than another during the last lap doesn't really tell you anything when you can see all the riders out on track for yourself. If the riders really do want it, then it just proves you should never ask sportspeople on how to run their sport. If you want to make qualifying exciting (or force riders to turn up), then have a few races to determines who gets the favourable starting positions.

They already did a long time ago - just with much smaller crowds, less money, and much less public interest.

Try Skyscanner - I'm sure they have to use the same airlines as everyone else... But fares from UK to Australia depend on when you travel, the route you take, and how long you're prepared to sit in a transit lounge. Leaving in early November and returning late February, maybe as cheap as 600 quid return, going up to 1,300. The closer to Christmas you travel the more expensive it generally becomes. You can ship 60 kgs by sea freight for about 200 quid or less, but then it takes several weeks. However, I wouldn't stick a race engine in a shipping container.

Except February, March and April are the wettest months of the year in SE Queensland, and when it rains it's Biblical...

There isn't anything like the money or global appeal in speedway as there is for even Rugby League, and I'm not convinced Canadian teams in RL makes much sense. Certainly people have lost interest in Super Rugby since it added the teams beyond its core base, and the huge time differences make the whole thing a bit of nightmare for television. League speedway is really only run in Europe so time zones wouldn't be the same issue, but a European competition would only make sense if some decent television or sponsorship deal was secured on the back of it. You couldn't really run such a thing on the expectations of crowd revenue, and I'm not convinced the likes of Poole v Falubaz Zielona Gora on a cold Wednesday night would really have as much appeal as Poole v Swindon for the average fan, although you could maybe stage away 'tours' as a couple of matches at a time which might appeal to some fans. I don't honestly think Poland would have much to gain from this nowadays, and it would appeal more to those national leagues where a team or two would like to run at a higher level of competition, but there aren't enough teams in their own country to form a league at the desired level. I actually think it more likely that British teams would run in the Swedish Leagues than the Polish ones. The time to have done a European League was 20 years ago when there was more equality between the three or four main leagues and cable and satellite televisions were looking for cheap content. It would also have been a good opportunity for those leagues to have taken control of the SGP and SWC and run those competitions for their own benefit. But no-one wanted to look at the big picture, speedway is now way off the radar as a marketable sport and everyone within the sport is just fighting over scraps these days.

Of course it could be done if the will was there. A Latvian and I think even a Hungarian team have ridden in the Polish Leagues, both a Swedish and German team rode in the top Danish League for a year or two, and a Norwegian team rode in the Swedish Leagues for a while (Phil Morris rode for them). Could be wrong, but I also seem to recall a Russian team in the Finnish League.

There's a speedway track at North Brisbane (near the airport) which is mainly/exclusively a training track, and I don't see any meetings listed in February. That's about 1 mile from Northgate railway station. There's also a speedway track at Ipswich - the town itself 30 miles from Brisbane and on the City Rail network - but the venue is actually at the Ipswich Motor Park which is another 5 or 6 miles further out in the countryside. The Australian U21 Championship is being held there on 19 January, but I don't see any meetings listed in February. Archerfield in the southern suburbs of Brisbane has formerly held speedway meetings, but I think is now exclusively Speedcars. I believe there's still some sort of junior track at Labrador in the Gold Coast about 50 miles from Brisbane, but I've not seen any meetings there for a long time. I think Rockhampton also runs some solo meetings, but that's nearly 400 miles north of Brisbane.

Ronnie Moore and Ivan Mauger are not British (and few will remember they rode for a 'British' team), and were involved in a sport that ranks somewhere alongside cheese rolling nowadays. I'm not sure why people are surprised by SPOTY each year - it's never been much interested in sports it doesn't cover. Yet every year there's the predictable letters from 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells' about the omission of so-and-sos favourite sport. Why do people bother watching it?

So what’s the ATP and WTA then? Individual tournaments might be run by clubs and promoters, but I was talking about the running of the professional circuits. More muppetry from Mick.

Day-to-day administration should be independent, and it's advisable to have independent advisors with significant influence to handle specialist areas like marketing and legal matters. Ultimately though, those investing the money and running the clubs ultimately need to have a significant say in the structure and direction of the sport even if they're bad at making the right decisions. I always think though, that Rugby League hasn't really made the progress it should have done considering the investment it's had over the last 20-odd years.

I'm familiar with the Mark McCormack and IMG's background, but I think it's arguable that he got his start in sports promotion because he was actually one of the (golf) players at that point. Mainstream tennis professionalised quite late, and prior to that professional tennis was a marginalised sideshow with inconsistent promotion and unstable finances. The first attempts at running a proper tour were actually put together by former players, before the ATP and WTA were founded to give all professional players eventual full control of the sport. Tennis is a very good example of a sport almost entirely run by the players, and golf substantially so. Of course, golf was one of the first professional sports and there is a long history of the players organising the tournaments they played in. So I think the point is that a sport run by the competitors and a successful sport are not mutually exclusive things. With a few exceptions though, IMG specialise in low budget sport as cheap fodder to fill off-peak television schedules around the world. When they tried to get into mainstream sports it didn't seem to go so well for them. By contrast, Barry Hearn has found a couple of niches that do well for him, and largely stuck to them.

Not really. Professional tennis is run by the players and is more lucrative than when it wasn't. Professional golf is largely run on similar lines successfully. Barry Hearn happened to chance upon a couple of (so-called) sports that have very little overheads, and where the players were paid a pittance at the time. The fact they're easy to televise allowed him to take advantage of the rise in satellite and cable television that needed a lot of relatively cheap content to fill their airtime. Good luck to him too, but the examples of snooker and darts are not necessarily a model or even replicable for other sports. I suspect that speedway is also something that he'd have looked at, and quickly realised that he shouldn't touch it with a bargepole...

And what if the excluded rider is still not ready after another 2 minutes? 2 minutes is there to ensure a race isn't indefinitely waiting for a rider who may have mechanical problems.

You're absolutely not getting VFM, but I'd expect more than 15 minutes actual entertainment even if it's only spread over 90 minutes, for 17 quid.

Long drawn-out meetings were also one of my main bugbears, but the reality of running 15 heats with 4 minute gaps is that a meeting would be over in an hour and 15 minutes. Unless there's also consideration of the overall package such as 'first-half', 'half-time' or 'second-half' entertainment, then it's not really going to really improve the value for money.

Is the 2 minute clock, absence thereof, or how the 2 minute rule should be interpreted, really the most pressing issue for British speedway?

Tee Mills went bust sometime around 1990 if I remember. There was also another tour company around that time that I forget the name of.

"The costs to a rider's equipment is nothing to do with the promoters." - allegedly...

One of the reasons speedway has got itself into the massive hole it has, is because both promoters and spectators have got themselves into the mindset that things have always been done in a certain way, so let's keep plugging away doing exactly the same thing regardless of whether it's actually appropriate for the modern world. Is Lewis Hamilton responsible for building and fixing his car, or does Harry Kane buy his own kit and take it home himself to wash? Of course not, so why on earth can't speedway reconsider how it does things? If, for example, the BSPA had a central pool of (say) 30-40 engines maintained by 2-3 engine builders to a contracted standard, which were allocated to riders at each meeting, there could be huge savings all round. Now the above may or may not be the right solution, but the only nonsense is when people are so blinkered that they're not receptive to considering change, or even worse just keep blindly heading down a path of failure. The harsh reality is that unless some workable solutions are tried to reduce costs all round, the sport is finished. All very well but the first thing a promoter is going to say when a rider on old kit loses a race against another rider on new kit, is why isn't your gear up to scratch? And the fans of that team will likely be moaning about it as well. Presumably though, someone must be buying all this second hand gear and using it somewhere, because you can't really use it for anything other than speedway. Well just cut the rider wages without doing anything else, and let's see where it gets the sport. My prediction would be a lot of riders just simply packing it in.