Bagpuss

Spot on. You get the feeling that the track and the grandstand were the absolute priorities and the rest was managed with what funds were left. The back straight is obviously a temporary structure but I enjoy watching from there as much as the seating in the opposite side. I’m sure with a bottomless pit of money the NSS could have been the greatest speedway arena in the world but in reality there were financial constraints. Having a blank canvas misses the point rather.

Perhaps I’m generalising a bit but most places are from Thornham round to Weybourne have a fair element of pretentiousness. And of course locals who grew up in those places can’t afford to live there when they leave nest.

Is an hour really a short drive There are plenty of nice places in Norfolk without going to the pretentious and second home dominated north coast.

The sport is full of them with degrees of wrongness I’d say

Yep, nothing to do with the fact that Philips is a wrong ‘un I’m sure.

Exactly this, the first Sky deal was in 1999 and plans should have been put in place back then to safeguard and develop speedway. People point fingers at recent chairmen but the rot was starting to set in and money was being squandered way, way before that.

Dan Roan on 5Live also mentioned it being for winter sports

I think it’s more the case that eleven sports which aren’t football are to receive handouts and if speedway isn’t part of that then it would be interesting to know why not.

A £300m rescue package covering eleven professional sports has been announced, other than both rugby codes, basketball and netball I can’t find details in the sports covered, I wonder if speedway will be one of the beneficiaries?

This is an interesting debate. Personally I think it boils down to what these young riders want to achieve from their careers.....based the the assumption that British speedway is reasonably unaffected by COVID then they can learn their trade in this country and probably end up earning decent money doubling up across our two leagues and emulating the likes of Cook, King, Wright, Worall and Harris. If they aspire to be more like Woffy & Lambert and want to give themselves the best chance to earn the big money in Poland as well as getting into GP, SWC and SEC then broadening their horizons now as teenagers and getting themselves known in Poland and learning the tracks etc is a must. Being an expert around Eastbourne, Edinburgh and Wolves is no good if you want to be riding on the biggest stages and making the grade on them one day. There may be setbacks along the way as it’s a cut throat business over there but if they want to see how far they can go and really push their potential to the limit it’s got to be done.

Probably best to wait and see if the rule actually comes to pass.

That’s the problem with speedway in a nutshell.

Great footage, thank you. Does anybody have the knowledge and time to post the line ups from those meetings please?

Laguta is probably the most exciting rider in world speedway at the moment for me.

I know, I’ve seen it, I suspect he wants to ride in Poland and Sweden too; as I said, let’s see what happens come the spring. Hopefully Poland won’t get their way.

Let’s see if he actually lines up for Swindon whenever the new season starts....chances are he will as he’s always been very loyal to Britain but lots can happen between now and then.

Presumably add Doyle, Lambert and Iversen to that list too.

You can imagine Polish clubs insisting that their contracted riders base themselves over there for the season and don’t leave other than for FIM events.

Yep, I remember that too, Good Friday 1999. Bunyan and Woodifield ended up pulling them to the ground long after any home fans cared any more.

Yep, I’d have thought if you really want to sponsor a rider you’d exhaust every avenue of communication before giving up and calling him out.

That sprung to my mind too, their are many simple explanations other than he could t be bothered Id have thought. He wasn’t included in the World Y21 Team Cup team either.....something seems to have gone down somewhere along the line.

I’m sure there would have been at least one but for Covid and the difficulties involved with getting in and out of countries. Regular experience abroad in whatever form is the best way forward and a Test Matches has to be a large part of that. As for Kemp, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.

He might well be but he has a better chance of making it if he is exposed to quality riders and better competitions now while he is in his improvement years. We have NOBODY beyond four or five senior riders who will ever cut it at international level and three of those were unavailable so it made total sense to blood a youngster at the weekend, we saw what happened last year when Cook and Harris were picked. I accept the odd rider will bloom late like Wright seems to have done but the chances are remote. I agree in part with what Grachan says, more of riders need to get out of the UK earlier, Rowe will have done his own development the world of good this season getting out to Poland as I believe there is only limited value in riding in our leagues, we don’t have enough tracks which resemble those on the continent and by and large the opposition isn’t strong enough to drag our lads along developmentally like the Extraliga does, the U21 riders there are chucked in the deep end but it produces results year after year.

Can you honestly say that you can see any of those riders being competitive at international level either now or in the future?

Understand what you are saying but I can see the format returning to the SWC version before long.