Kevin Meynell

They only own the British rights to him, and in principle can't stop him riding in other countries unless it clashes with a domestic fixture to which he's contracted to ride in. Poland has a similar asset system, although I don't think Sweden does. AFAIK, riders in the Swedish league merely sign-up with teams on an annual basis and are free to move without a transfer fee when out of contract. The situation with the SGP is different though, because it is not in free competition with the national competitions. It can stage its events whenever it wants and without regard to other fixtures, and it can use any riders that it wants (whether they're needed elsewhere or not).

Yes, because they run on Tuesdays and Sundays respectively, when no BEL has its regular race night. In fact, Sweden chose Tuesdays many years ago precisely because it wouldn't clash with the then British League. By contrast, the SGP is run on prime days for staging league racing, and clashes (or did) with at least four BEL teams. BSI can also re-organise GPs when they wish, without any regard to existing fixtures. The difference is that the Swedish and Polish leagues generally do not take away riders from BEL fixtures. The SGP does, and the BSPA has no power to stop them because FIM meetings have priority. Again, the difference was the British speedway generally benefitted from the World Championship because it staged at least two rounds in Britain where the profits where shared between promotions. British speedway also profited whenever a World Final was staged in Britain. Nowadays, only BSI profits from the World Championship. Well I don't actually have any confidence that they would do a good job, but neither is it right that a company unrelated to the national speedway leagues is running the SGP.

I think it's unlikely that BSI took much of the loss. It's usually the local organisers who are financially responsible for the GPs, so SVEMO undoubtedly suffered most. This said, it can't have done BSI's credibility much good, and they may be paying in terms of lost sponsorship this season.

I don't think you can really compare a few scratch races featuring junior riders, with a properly-organised second-half programme. If a meaningful second-half was organised that included the top riders as well, then fans might be willing to stay on.

I think many of the grading rules this season were simply to accommodate the new teams coming up. The grading system also disguised the fact that a very low points limit was effectively being operated. As a result, unless the league increases in size again, changes will definitely have to be made to the system for next season, simply because of average inflation. However, I think the fact that the BEL GSAs no longer include bonus points is a clue that the league may revert to straightforward points limit next season.

The FIM statutes actually state 'All nations in the world may be represented in the FIM, but each by only one FMN'. The question is how you define a nation, and for this, most international organisations defer to the UN-derived list of countries and territories (on which Scotland and Wales do not appear). If they didn't, you end-up with all sort of nationalist groups claiming to represent all sorts of entities. Okay, speedway only involves a handful of countries, but the FIM is responsible for other forms of motorcycle competition as well, and probably needs to be consistent. That was in the UEM Pairs competition, and the 'B' teams were entered by host nations of the Semi-Finals to make-up a shortfall in numbers. I'm not sure that you can read anything into that.

It largely depends on the governing body of the sport in question. In rugby and motorcycle racing, the Irish federations cover the whole of Ireland, in cricket, the ECB covers both England and Wales, whilst in football there are separate federations for each home nation. I don't see any problem with cross-border or British (Isles) competition. The top teams in Scotland, Wales and Ireland desperately need some proper competition, and it would also help the smaller teams in those countries who are bankrupting themselves trying to compete with the likes of Rangers and Celtic. I don't believe that Britain entering the Olympic football tournament would compromise the status of the separate home nations in the World Cup. This is already guaranteed by the FIFA statutes which are pretty unchangeable, so I suspect the real reason for our non-participation is simply the disruption it would cause to the domestic leagues. There's nothing to stop bi-lateral test matches being arranged between Scotland and other countries as they don't have any official status. However, for FIM competitions, Scotland will have to become an independent country first. The ACU used to represent the whole of the Commonwealth (including Australia and New Zealand), and riders from the different constituent countries used to represent Great Britain. It was then decided that each Commonwealth country (including Scotland) would track separate teams, but they all met in a qualifying round to decide which of the teams would represent the ACU in the latter stages of the World Team Cup. By the time Australia (and later New Zealand) formed their own federations, Scotland no longer had good enough riders to warrant a separate team, so England carried on alone, even though it was the official British team. Scottish and Wales riders could still be selected, and did on occasions ride. Of course, the complication is the World Pairs Final in which both Scotland and England appeared one year. It would seem the rules for this competition were more relaxed than for other FIM competitions, and the addition of extra teams may have simply been a way of making-up the numbers. The fact that other countries tracked B-teams in certain rounds, would appear to verify this assertion.

It's no different to the situation in Spain and Denmark, and to a certain extent, in Germany and the Netherlands. The FIM goes by internationally-recognised countries, and Scotland and Wales are part of the UK for this purpose. Furthermore, once you start going down this road, international competition would soon be turned into little more than inter-regional competition. It's true that the home nations compete separately in some sports (e.g. football and rugby), but that's because those sports were invented here and it was some time before they were taken-up by foreign countries. I can't say that I would be opposed to a domestic international series, but unfortunately, I'm not sure that Scotland and Wales would offer much competition to England at the present time. A dedicated Scotland-Wales series would be more realistic.

Each track could perhaps also run an individual meeting where riders could get bonus points towards qualification for the Riders' Championship. That might provide more interest in reviving the traditional open meetings.

I like the idea of having a second-half competition to determine the qualifiers for the ELRC or PLRC, but wouldn't the riders be exhausted after riding up to seven heats in the main meeting, and then another three in the individual meeting? In addition, why restrict the second-half to just the top six riders from each team? I would simply take the seven riders from each team and a couple of juniors and run four knockout heats, with the winners progressing to a Final (much like the old second-halves). That would only require a maximum of two extra rides, and would be cheaper to run as well. As far as I can see though, the biggest obstacle to such a competition would still be cost.

Whilst it would be nice to have three leagues of approximately equal size, why does it actually matter if they're not? In fact, there are 30 standalone tracks (31 if you include Sittingbourne), so all that would happen is five teams moving down from the BPL to the BCL (to make 10 teams in every league). I'm sure the BPL fans would be happy with that! Firstly, is it sensible to subsidise teams that can't afford to run at a higher level? Secondly, where would the money come from? This idea just won't go away. Promotion and relegation will never work unless there are more teams trying to get into the top league than there are places. I don't see teams clamouring to get into the BEL, and Wimbledon and Mildenhall don't seem that interested in moving-up to the BPL either. European law doesn't allow it. The only thing you could really do would be to insist a certain number of riders held an ACU licence (so they'd have to give priority to British meetings), but that doesn't preclude foreigners from holding them. I can't imagine many riders would be interested in trekking all over the country for one ride per meeting!

Agreed, although it might have been worthwhile had the USA been in the competition.

But then it's not a World Cup - it's a five or six nation tournament plus a world select. I'd have thought the US would struggle to track 8 decent riders as well these days.

A runoff. The problem in previous years was that there were three groups, but only five teams could go into the Last Chance. Therefore, there had to be a tiebreak method to separate teams between groups, even though they hadn't ridden against each other. This season, it's two from each qualifying group to the last chance, and the top two from that into the Final, so there isn't an issue anymore.

I think the first two qualifying rounds of this season's SWC have perfectly illustrated how boring the competition would be if it was run using a test match format. With the greatest of respect to Italy and Hungary, they're a long way from giving the big six a run for their money, and on last night's evidence, even the Czechs would struggle to track 7-8 competitive riders.

There are no reserves, so you'd have to hope you could bring in a tactical sub.

The prize money is crap, and barely covers expenses, let alone anything else.

The tracks at Sofia and Targovishte are apparently still operating. Were there ever any tracks in Estonia, or did the riders compete in Latvia and Russia? I'm not sure you can really say there are any speedway tracks in Japan. Autoracing is really a different sport. I don't think there have ever been any speedway tracks in Switzerland. I think most forms of motorsport have been banned there since the 1950s, and the speedway riders all ride in Germany. All the tracks that are operating or believed to be operating are listed at http://www.speedway-faq.org/tracks.html In some cases, riders represent countries that don't actually have speedway tracks. Similarly, some countries have speedway tracks, but no riders (e.g. Belgium).

AFAIK, it was an attempt to promote the sport in Portugal.

I haven't a clue who you are, but I hope you can manage a speedway better than you can write

A draft system is a reasonable way of distributing the talent around, but it relies on the fact that a lot of upcoming players are competing for only a few team places. In speedway, I simply don't think there are enough riders wanting to come into the BEL, either from the BPL or abroad, to make it effective. In fact, if promoters didn't actively go out and look for new talent, it would be a real struggle to fill the teams.

Is Oxford not running next season then?

It's worth considering, but I don't think supporters would really get behind regional teams in the same manner as their own. There isn't really any sense of regional identity in most parts of Britain. I would select a number of club sides from each country who would ride in the European Cup/League each season unless relegated. The highest-placed team in each national league that was not already in the competition, would replace the relegated teams. The competition would therefore be run separately to the national leagues, but teams would still be there on merit. It would also get around the problem of adopting a 'UEFA Champions League'-style approach, which can't really work while riders compete for multiple teams.

Mylor, I guess so, but then it wouldn't be a test of which was the best team. I think the only realistic way to have a European competition would be to effectively treat it as a separate 'league' where each participating team signed separate riders.

And what a scandal that is! In an era where all manner of crap buildings get preserved, it was an absolute disgrace that White City was allowed to be torn-down and replaced by an office block. Not only was it the venue for the 1908 Olympics, but it was for a while the largest stadium in the world. I think it is still the only Olympic stadium to have been demolished, although the Amsterdam stadium came close to the same fate a few years ago.