Bagpuss

Would rather finish bottom!

I don't think anybody is suggesting that fixed night will 'solve all the problems' but straight away Mondays & Wednesdays will avoid clashes with PL clubs.

I think the EL having set race nights will help. However a them-and-us attitude really doesn't help anybody, and the FTR scheme is one of the few good ideas to come out of the EL for quite some time. I think predicting the 'death of lower levels' is a little bit dramatic.

Any rider who wants to improve should surely strive to ride at as high a level as he can? And as such higher level competition should always take priority, has always irritated me that double uppers can miss EL meetings and therefore testing themselves against better opposition to ride PL. Like it or not a large part of the NL is training riders for higher levels of speedway, surely we want that development to happen. That said Hopwood & Hughes have little chance of succeeding at a higher level than the NL IMO.

Trouble is you can't physically drag a rider over here to ride if they don't want to. And if any are even half interested they know they can name their price as Lynn are desperate. Also as none of those names Pinny mentioned live over here there is the cost of flights ina & out to consider , and I would expect a fair chunk of Puk's deal was sponsorship built up over his time at Lynn which would probably be unavailable for a new rider.. While the promotion deserve criticism for the Kerr debacle I do have a bit of sympathy over the Iversen situation as there just aren't enough decent riders prepared to take on the UK's schedule.

Ah, Starman's 'can't do' attitude is out for all to see once again. There must be a problem there somewhere if you look for it hard enough..... Probably annoyed because Lord Ford didn't think of it first.

There is a reason I put the word 'completely' in there.....

Because they aren't completely incompetent.

Once Blackbird 'retired' there was a need for an extra rider to be named to make all teams competitive. I think there is a bigger picture, on the whole the reserve slots are filled with reasonably young British riders who have room for improvement but there is the odd name like Wilko, Auty, Lambert on the list who are probably as good as they will ever be but are in there to keep all teams competitive and others to provide guest options. To my mind though its better to have these riders in reserve berths than sub standard foreigners.

Perhaps there is a discount for buying in advance? I believe Edinburgh operate such a system.

I'm pretty confident that if they knew at the start of November they'd have signed somebody else by Christmas let alone now.

Nobody knew that evening and nothing was mentioned by the rider himself or the club, the event was almost independent from the Stars and more about him as an international rider. It was held on November 6th so it was a further fortnight before anything was announced about him not riding. By this time whatever plan B they may or may not have had was gone. The promotion have certainly made a pig's ear of team building this winter but to suggest that they knew in October that Puk wasn't going to ride this year is nonsense.

How naive you are.

Would they? On what do you base that? The announcement wasn't made until November 20th so why would they sit on the information until then and not sign anyone in the meantime? Seems like you are plucking ideas out of the sky as usual.

Totally agree with all that until your last sentence. I don't think Lynn knew his plans until he told them no, he was obviously undecided himself for a long while. Perhaps they can be criticised for not having a back up plan but that could be easier said than done, perhaps they did have but the delay meant that the back up rider found employment elsewhere. Unfortunately Lynn took a risk waiting for Puk and it didn't pay off. Don't blame him at all though for packing in the UK.

Depends how much Larsen was asking really. I'm sure Buster has a limit in terms of what he will pay and perhaps Larsen's demands exceeded that. Lets be honest, if a rider thinks a club is desperate they will try to squeeze as much from them as possible. Perhaps Buster is playing the long game and hoping to strengthen later in the season.

Fair enough, I stand corrected. Really don't understand the logic of the change though as all it has done is deprive us of one of the league's best reserves. As for all the names suggested on this thread, I can't believe Lynn didn't explore every possible avenue in the time they have taken to name the last rider. Unfortunately riders either aren't falling over themselves to ride in the UK or their demands are simply too high.

Several posters said straight away that the limit was too high, was quite obvious that the number of available riders was inadequate to make all teams competitive. Hence the lopsided nature of team strengths this year. Quite possible that Lynn hung on too long for an answer from Iversen as other 'top' riders had signed up elsewhere, and it would be fair to say that our promotion have had a bit of a nightmare winter. But the limit was still too high.

My suspicion is that the race night was changed to accommodate Mads.

Agree but I think it's pretty clear we aren't going to get one of those.

Not for me, at least Barker gets stuck in. Neither are going to tempt me to part with my hard earned very often though.

If Barker is the last rider then the promotion can't moan about poor crowds having changed race night and named a crap side.

If the rumours I've just seen on Twitter are true (no reason to believe they're not based on the tweeters) its very much the latter.

It might well be that Peterborough gave him an ultimatum, if he didn't release himself from Lynn and therefore be available for all of Panthers fixtures he would be replaced by them, and thus risk losing his sponsorship. I can't really blame P'boro for that, they need to look after their own interests. Wilkinson has effectively replaced Blackbird in the draft and ensured that every team has reasonably strong reserves. I think Lynn should be grateful that all seven clubs agreed to adding Wilko as they would have been within their rights to refuse with Lynn having cocked up with both Kerr & Lambert and made them go with a weak 6 & 7.

Id have thought some of those would be youngsters who we are looking to be in the SWC side in 3-5 years time.