BWitcher

No you haven't. Only in your warped perception. You've managed to name around 15 riders over a 25 year period to prove how 'strong' the league was. Marvelous! Some of the riders you named rode 2 seasons or less in the league. So basically you've come up with less than 1 rider per team. There's 7 riders in a team! The best you have come up with is riders on the up who didn't stick around, those on the way down nowhere near their best and riders who couldn't cut the mustard in the top flight! These are the selected riders over a 25 year period!! Not going to say much for the remaining 6 riders in each team. Another utter myth that has been dismantled many times. Teams didn't have 'three world class heat leaders'. Some teams did on occasion.. the majority didn't. Those that did very often had very poor reserves.

Once again, thanks for proving my point for me. The national league was never super tough, riders of ability would clean up and very quickly move on, riders on the wane who could no longer cut it at the top could extend their career by years and journeymen riders could forge a decent career. You're expandind your time frame ever more and more in an attempt to prove something. Even bringing riders who raced for one season in the league into your argument. As said, there are many names who had short spells in the league on the way up, some who had longer spells on the way down.. But the overwhelming majority of the league was mediocrity and below. That's why its z lower league!

What a load of pie in the sky nonsense. How are Scunthorpe getting on by the way? Another long list of names that people judge from in the main at their peak.. which wasn't when they were riding consistently in the National League, with the exception of the National League journeymen who rarely ventured into the top flight. Once again though people think they were world beaters because they rode in a big league, in an easier heat format, racing against lesser riders and clocking up averages including bonus pts so there were lots of them with 9-11 pt averages. The National League has almost always (changed a bit in recent years) been the domain of up and coming riders who soon progress to the top flight (Wigg, Dugard, Loram), riders on the slide who look for an easier time at a lower standard (Kennett, Les Collins) and journeymen. It's very very easy to come up with a list of names of riders in that era.. I've already provided a list of names in a latter era Premier League that absolutely blow your list out of the water so it proves nothing, here they are and more.. Woffinden, Holder, Ward, N. Pedersen, B. Pedersen, K. Bjerre, Iversen, Doyle, Crump, Havelock. Right now in the PL you have riders such as Lambert, Nick Morris, Ben Barker, Sam Masters, Craig Cook, Danny King, Brady Kurtz, Jack Holder. Some of those are on the up and in years to come their names will look even more impressive.. some of them have reached their level and are taking advantage of a lower standard. Just how it's always been.

The fact is, it doesn't matter one iota what they did years later. The point of me naming Woffinden, Holder, Ward was to show you it's irrelevant. You've not quite grasped that.

What an awful contradictory post. How large due you want to make your selection period? One minute you are talking about Boyce, Wiltishire, Dugard, the next you are on about Collins and Penhall! One minute you are telling us how great the riders in the league were, the next they wouldn't be able to score more than a couple of pts at reserve? Again, what period? It's no good plucking things out that are 15-20 years apart. Of course you are also falling into the age old issue of picking out names that weren't 'names' at the time, just riders. Easy to do that from history. I'll play the name game however and give you 3 recent Premier League riders.... Woffinden, Holder, Ward. I'll even go back a little bit further and throw Nicki Pedersen in.

It's actually an absolutely terrible post.

Should have, could have, might have.... didn't. That's the difference between the elite greats of the sport and those just below them.

You keep saying this.. the 'mega tough' old NL. What was mega tough about it? It was a league full of journeyman. The current PL is stronger.

It all comes back to the fact that folk were watching 13 heat meetings, with heat leaders not meeting each other as much as they do now very often on preferred gate positions. Resulting in all 3 heat leaders in teams running high averages (as they included bonus pts).. and 'some' folk think that meant they were all top class riders as they rarely saw them beat... especially as they often only saw them once a year. Now, you see riders all the time with all the TV coverage, plus visiting tracks 2,3 sometimes 4 times a season. Heat leaders constantly racing each other.. resulting in their aura of invincibility being eroded. Whatever era you choose to take, as waiheke mentions above, you will always have 2 or 3 dominant forces at the top, another group just below capable of challenging but not as consistently, then a further group below that. No he doesn't.. as has been explained in the preceding posts.

Yep.. She was doing so well too! Not really, just another dumbass rider in front.

Speedway managers get worse! Berwick giving up the best gates. Unbelievable.

Wow, who was that girl interviewing? She was word perfect and seemed to know what she was talking about!

lol. We're so blessed.

Very strange indeed. Great stuff Alan, got one now, thanks for your help.

Darn, flagging up all kinds of warnings for that link. Any others?

Perhaps its a case of go with the slowest and if he has no joy, not the engines fault, he's always like that.... but if he starts doing well.....

Not if you're just watching the leader there wasn't. Meanwhile there was overtaking in 17 of the 23 heats. A number of those had multiple passes, plus races with passing, repassing and passing again. So we can put that myth to bed.. its not passing that excites speedway fans!

So you condone posters breaking forum rules. Which is what Gustix does with each and everyone of his trolling posts. Glad we cleared that up.

Last night's meeting was awful, the bikes had no engines, and the stadium was empty. I don't think Michael Jepsen Jensen deserved to win either. Nobody was enjoying the meeting, I could tell from watching the TV. Nobody was cheering, there was no noise. The shale was the wrong color as well, I didn't like it being green. Finally, I'm fed up with them racing clockwise in GP's.

Then again, wrong sport for you. Besides, you didn't give it as an opinion, you clearly stated the events didn't happen. They did.

If you're unhappy with passing in 17 of 23 heats then speedway is the wrong sport for you.

From, you, you can't argue with facts. Passing in 17 of 23 races. Doesn't matter what you claim, that it was took place.

And more fictitious nonsense! a few comments just taken from live updates.. which according to you never happened.. Heat 2: Zagar round Jepsen Jensen on bend 3 lap 1 Heat 3: Holder gets past Hancock on lap 2. Heat 6: Doyle goes under Kildemand on bend 1 lap 2 and brings him down. Re-Run: Kildemand gates moves out wide, taking Iversen with him. Cook cuts up the inside to lead off bend 2. Kildemand reclaims the lead coming into bend 3 and Iversen takes second coming off bend 4 lap 1. Heat 7: Zagar got past Batchelor at the end of lap 2. Batchelor re-passed Zagar on bend 2 lap 4, ran wide on bends 3&4 lap 4 and Zagar cut back to re-pass Batchelor on the run to the line. Heat 8: Harris emerges from bend 2 in front but leaves a huge gap going into bend 1 lap 2 which Hancock takes advantage of. And that's just from the quiet part of the meeting as the racing got better from then on. There were several incidents, two involving Kildemand being taken off, Nicki wiping one out and Garrity wiping one out. Holder was bouncing off the air fence regularly (unless you mean a repeat of the T-Rick ride, which has happened once, ever). There were cutbacks resulting in passes multiple times during the meeting as well as numerous outside passes. Yet you claim none of these things happened.. Stunning.

You claimed it took till Heat 19 to get anything 'near to a race'. That is made up as there had been passing in the majority of heats.

You must simply have been doing the poor camera mans trick of just watching the leader... as there was passing (multiple in some cases) in 17 of the 23 heats. In at least 3 of the others there was very, very tight racing. Which leaves just 3 out and out processions. IF gate 1 hadn't been so advantageous it could have been one of the best GP's of all time, but because so often the rider off 1 had such a lead, they couldn't be caught. The races between the other 3 gates were excellent.