4thbender

Wolfie was alluding to the fact that the BV second strings would be required to score at least 11 points between them in order to achieve the 40 points needed to secure overall victory. Do keep up.

Who knows? They'll make the rules up as they go along (as they always do). Sheffield may even "do a Belle Vue" and find some way to bring Szmarzlick in as a late reserve.

The disruptions to Sheffield's season just go on and on. As well as our usual ration of weather interruptions, we've had meetings postponed or severely disrupted by the bursting of an air-fence linkage, failure of the starting-tapes, fence-posts damaged by contractors, a shortage of tyres, the death of a monarch and now - it would appear - a murder. I'm seriously expecting a sink-hole to open up and swallow the stadium. It's never-ending: you couldn't make this stuff up.

Has no-one noticed that every member of the Sheffield team scored a bonus point (except Connor Mountain - he scored 4!) Has that ever been done before?

It's raining.

I stand by my assertion that there is some major malfunction in the way speedway is being run. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, Sheffield's home calendar for 1967 shows a grand total of 31 Thursday race-nights, all with packed houses of paying customers. Perhaps those were the days when we had people running the sport who knew what they were doing, but If the league management fail to organise the weekly arrangements for what is barely a dozen meetings per team throughout the season, there is something amiss. Even your friend Peter Mole wrote in tonight's programme notes that the last home fixture "was almost like an away fixture for our lads, we've had so few meetings at Owlerton recently." Says it all, really.

The rules state that the semi-final play-offs will be 1st v 4th and 2nd v 3rd. How will they decide who is first and who is second with both teams tied on 43 points and the decider yet to be contested?

Judging by the announcement placed on the Tigers' website today, it would appear the home PL fixture with Ipswich will take place AFTER the play-offs. The announcement seems to suggest that Sheffield can still finish top of the Premiership table ahead of the play-offs if they win both of their remaining meetings at Owlerton against King’s Lynn and Belle Vue this Thursday and next. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but six points from those two matches will give us 43 points, matching the 43 that Ipswich already have in the bank. In other words, the outstanding (as yet uncontested) home match with Ippo would effectively be the decider, but it can't happen until AFTER the play-offs! In those circumstances, how will they decide which teams will race against each other in the semi-finals with finishing positions undecided? If I was confused before, my mind is now completely frazzled. Whatever else happens, I'm still betting the Tigers v Ipswich match will be quietly forgotten (or decided BEFORE the play-offs by the toss of a coin), once again short-changing the Sheffield paying customers. After all, when the play-offs have taken place and the league champions have lifted the trophy, what's the point of a further league match that can't have any impact on the result? Considering all the Thursday nights throughout the summer when there's been no action at Owlerton, this position takes some believing. You can't make this stuff up.

Lightweights. Between 1967 and 1971, riders representing British League teams took part in 36 league matches per season, plus countless world, European and British League Riders' Championship qualifiers, KO Cup fixtures and sundry open events. A glance at Sheffield's home calendar for 1967 shows a grand total of 31 Thursday race-nights, all with packed houses of paying customers. I even remember in the late sixties Sheffield hosting a 'B' team which raced on Sunday afternoons. By 1971 there were 36 teams in British League Divs. 1 and 2, all reporting good crowds. What would today's promoters give for that kind of support?

I feel really sorry for Sheffield's riders. Between now and the end of the season they have to race in at least nine (possibly eleven) fixtures: Three home league fixtures (in 9 days), two (possibly four) play-off matches, two cup-final matches with Kings Lynn and two pairs events (Sheffield and Belle Vue). That's almost as many as they've had in the previous five months! We'll still be racing at Christmas.

With the cut-off date having been set as the conclusion of fixtures on Thursday September 22 and the meeting with Ipswich next Monday having been cancelled, I'm guessing that the match with Ipswich won't now take place at all. The ridiculous prospect of having to organise a last-minute 'double header' (or determine final league positions on the toss of a coin!) just adds further hilarity to the laughing stock that is premiership speedway. Between April and September there have been 26 Thursdays and 26 Mondays, yet the league management and Owlerton hierarchy have conspired to make a cock-up of fitting in ten home league matches. Considering the vast length of week-after-week inactivity that have dogged us throughout the summer, it is yet another shameful spectacle that we should encounter such a backlog of fixtures at this late stage. But the season's not over yet.... as well as the Ipswich fixture, we have home matches with Kings Lynn and Belle Vue also to fit in, and just nine days to do it! What's the weather forecast for this Autumn period?

The only available date to fit in the re-run of tonight's rained off meeting with Belle Vue is Monday 19th September. Failing that, Sheffield will have to stage double-headers to meet the deadline. Any more rain-offs will mean we're stuffed. After the cut-off date we will still need to stage the League Trophy final with Kings Lynn, the rained off pairs event from last week and whatever play-offs we qualify for. It makes all the three-week breaks throughout the season look rather stupid.

With at least seven more home fixtures to fit in (with uncertain weather conditions in September and October and four Mondays/Thursdays already ruled out after 25 August for away fixtures) the Tigers' season is now bound to spill over into November. Wonder how the stadium will cope with fog and ice.

Let's leave the grass-track racing to Adam Ellis and his French mates.

For the second week on the trot I'm explaining to the grandkids that the match is rained off... while basking in 20 degree bright sunshine. The lawn outside my house (which is prone to turning to a quagmire after even just a moderate rainfall) is dry and firm. I find it hard to believe that Owlerton (three miles away) is any different. Something is very wrong at Sheffield Speedway. Whether it's the track or the people who run it is a mystery but, for a sport which hopes to attract a new generation of followers, a single meeting in the entire six-week kids' summer holiday is an opportunity wasted. My grandkids have lost interest and I'm starting to feel that way too.

8 Hours to go and it's pouring. Maybe the sun will come out later. Based on last week's experience, there should have been an announcement by now.

Pairs match rained off (well, not really - the sun's out in Sheffield). Let me make a prediction right now: following week after week throughout the summer of no action at Owlerton, Sheffield will be hit by an almighty fixture backlog by the end of October. You heard it here first.

Okay, how's this for a scenario... One of your properties has a few cracked tiles in the bathroom, so you arrange for a bathroom fitter to come and fit some new tiles. But in the process of doing so, he accidentally rips out the cold water pipe and now there's water pi55ing down the stairs and through the ceiling below. The tenant, meanwhile is a single mother with a new born babe. Do you let the bloke go home for his tea and leave you with a major emergency? Of course not: he stays there till the pipe's fixed. This is a lesson Mr. Bates has clearly not learned, and now he's got a thousand people queuing at the turnstiles for a speedway match, a load of broken posts and not a contractor in sight. Whose fault is it?

I think Lynn have just signed Klindt, so that should fix it.

You defeat your own argument. There are enough natural impediments to running a speedway team (such as weather issues, rider injuries, council regulators, local competition, noise abatement regs, etc) without causing extra ones through avoidable human error such as allowing contractors to overrun their schedules and damage property they've no right to be interfering with.

And who will pay Sheffield Speedway for the lost revenue, the riders for their loss of earnings, the stadium for lost car-park revenue, the fans for the disruption to travelling arrangements and the bars and on-track retailers for their losses? And before you mention it, the meeting will still go ahead, but it will probably be at the back end of September. This doesn't make allowance for weekly cashflow which requires all these stakeholders to pay their week-to-week bills in the meantime. It's a complete dog's dinner, and eminently avoidable.

I take it you've never run a business. If you had, you would know that any entrepreneur having hundreds of thousands of pounds invested in a business undertaking would make absolutely sure that no third party came along interfering with their ability to meet their business commitments or undermining their means of raising profitable revenue. Sheffield Speedway appear to have allowed these contractors to do both! If I owned the business, I would have been there watching their every move and they wouldn't have left site until any damage to my stuff had been rectified.

No mate, the construction team was already there, and the speedway management should have made sure they stayed there until the work was completed to the satisfaction of all the stadium's users, not just the greyhound fraternity. It's called "protecting your interests."

Makes you wonder what goes on in the heads of those in charge. Dodgy air bags, knackered starting tapes, broken fence posts.... whatever next?... a plague of frogs? Of course, it's NEVER their fault. Sheffield's woes are down to ill fortune on a biblical scale. They must have committed some really heinous offence in the past that has really upset the Almighty! Let's put this in perspective. If my daughter was getting married on Saturday morning and British Gas turned up the week before and dug an enormous hole on the path outside my house, there would be no question of my daughter having to climb into the limo wearing her wedding dress and wellingtons. Even if it meant me staying out all Friday night with a shovel, that hole would be filled in and the pathway cleared. Some things are just too important to leave to chance. So how important is a Thursday night speedway event in Sheffield? Clearly, their solution is to cancel the wedding. Tells you a lot. Sheffield Speedway has a duty of care to its customers, employees, contractors and stakeholders and should be moving heaven and earth to protect its interests. So I just don't believe this "we were given our first access back into the stadium today (Wednesday)" statement; the Speedway Office is inside the stadium - they should have been out there checking for damage every hour of every day and insisting the contractors don't leave until everything is ship shape long before Thursday night. I'm afraid three major disruptions on the trot shows that somebody is just not up to the job.

Absolutely correct. I toyed with the idea of making a formal complaint to the SCB about the referee's slowness to act, but figured I'd be wasting my time. Why did it take him 35 minutes to realize the normal starting equipment was shot? After 10 minutes of the electrician fiddling about unsuccessfully he should have advised the team managers that the green light starting procedure would be adopted (according to the announcer this is the FIM rule) and got on with it. It took him a further twenty minutes to advise the riders of the change in procedure and, even after Ryan announced that the riders had been duly advised, it still took the referee another ten minutes to get back in his box and get racing underway. An utter shambolic example of the referee making a bad situation ten times worse. Apparently Steady puts this latest Owlerton disaster down to 'bad luck.' He should remember the 16th century proverb: "Diligence is the mother of good luck."