THE DEAN MACHINE

personally I don’t have a problem with it, we have a rider shortage crisis right across the board and the more riders that want to ride the better, the litmus test for me is if the people who pay to watch it want it then it’s ok

I don’t know what to think at this point, I’m willing to give mayfield the benefit of the doubt but they are hardly doing themselves any favours in the promotional sense

Mildenhall have signed a pole, pole in Nora league ? Wrong or right ?

Have the bspl become so desperate and tunnel visioned in their quest to get Northampton running they have forgot what their actual job is ? They have practically isolated and ignored the fans and even the other 4 teams to a degree since November to the point now where even the most loyal fans are getting fed up and if like me thinking is it worth it anymore, this winter has been one of the most damaging to its credibility winters the sport has ever had

Bradford bulls posting about their massive attendance last night of 10,000 and the pictures of the stadium look pretty full, am I missing something? The stadium as far as I’m aware hasn’t changed and has a capacity of over 26,000 and was even more back in the 80/90s, so it was less than half full ? But doesn’t look it in the pictures

Well that’s another week of silence, the eventual news better be all singing and dancing greatest speedway news ever

I sort of understand riders wanting bigger and bigger deals because unfortunately most come into the sport with the mentality of it’s my living and I don’t blame them for that, if anyone is at fault it’s the sport feeding that illusion to them but for me it wasn’t my living it was my dream and I lived it

I loved it a Berwick, the fans made me feel like it was my home and it felt like a big family, it was 550mile round trip for home meetings but worth every mile and days I’ll never forget

It is a generational thing but doesn’t make your observations wrong

Well it certainly had a lot of sway in Birminghams plight, they were paying more than they should of to riders and obviously hindsight is a great thing but after the season’s performances it turned out they were paying way more, there were times last season when some riders should of been paying the crowd to watch them

I suppose I could of asked for more money but I didn’t really care, I just wanted to race speedway, the privilege of being part of a team was for me what speedway was all about, it always made me more determined to beat whoever it was if I knew they were on a good screw from their team, I think I was one of the lowest paid riders ever to race for 21 years but not only did I achieve my lifetime ambition I also did alright for myself so looking back what else could I ask for in life

Another interesting bit in the star about wages was Poland are trying to introduce a wage cap and if it gets in as an example Jason Doyle’s deal would of been deemed illegal along with a few others like vaculik , Thompsen and pawlicki’s and half of tarnow team

I once asked Mike Bowden at Plymouth why he booked me for so many meetings as I lived over 200 miles away, he said because 1 you always do well here and 2 when I phone you you never ask how much am I getting paid

Well I wouldn’t go that far 😂 I had a go

In 2003 I did nearly 80 meetings with an average round trip of 400 miles per meeting, my van which I paid for was doing around 60-80k miles a year riding sometimes 4 times per week and washed and prepped my own bikes,,worked part time mechanic for Adam skornicki and sometimes washed Joe screens bikes and worked as a full time courier often delivering on way to meetings and sometimes after meetings and I did it for peanuts so forgive me if I have little sympathy for the likes of Jason Edward’s ,they don’t know they are born

We took no further interest in those places after we were told that and have moved onto other land available

To be honest I’m not really bothered, I went to the IOW twice last year and will be going twice again this year, I raced for them for 2 years and was one of my favourite tracks to get too, I thought the ferry crossing was part of the fun

Yea without subsidy it’s £160 return per van, slighty cheaper for smaller van but still extortionate for the couple of miles that it is but still going to work out a lot cheaper than getting Northampton off the ground

This is what we have been told by 2 football clubs, I must stress these were amatuer clubs not professional league clubs

Forget Northampton, use the IOW, track and stadium ready to go, can run on Thursdays, ferry crossings being the major downside but surely something can be worked out, will they get big enough crowd ? Maybe in the summer months but out of season probably not but you’re going to lose a lot less money than Northampton and it’s not going to set you back £200,000 to get it up and running

I firmly believe the only chance wolves have is a return to monmore, I have my theories about what the problem was/is and where we are today 2 years later and that’s why I said the MP Phillips is the man to speak to entain about this, he is on the board of the greyhound association and is also part of speedway futures Ltd, the problem(whatever it was/is is within entain the company and not the stadium itself who have told us it wasn’t them who kicked wolves out, Entain themselves said 2 years ago that injury to the dogs was the problem, I contacted the anti greyhound people to get the figures to see if the injuries to the dogs dropped after he speedway left, all they said was the greyhound association had the figures but don’t willingly publish them but did say there had been more greyhound deaths in 2024 at all tracks despite less races but they doubted entains claim about monmore and so did the MP pat macfadden in a letter to entain which I have a copy of

Chris still retains his love for the sport and is still hurt by entain but he isn’t out there doing the ground work to get wolves back either at monmore or elsewhere, I spoke with him in November about J11 on the M6 but that could be 10 years away, we contacted entain ourselves just before Xmas and also spoke with the manager at monmore and that is literally all that has happened in the last 6 months, I’m sure Chris would help any person/team that tried to get wolves back but doing it himself No, I’ve been helping heathens next generation for the past few months and they are relentless for some land and we have been to look at 4 pieces of land in the last 3 weeks alone and are still trying for the rocky lane site, I just wish someone was doing the same for wolves

Yes he does get called Chris who know him but it’s cvs to the speedway world

Trust me he isn’t, he isn’t looking for land and he isn’t trying to get back into monmore, we contacted entain ourselves a month back and he wasn’t interested himself, I think if it was 20 years ago then maybe but I think he just too old now to do it all again and I say that in a kind way not to be derogatory

Because firstly CVS isn’t interested and it’s time he came out and said so and more importantly CVS has no say in anything about greyhounds, Mr Phillips does and is part of not only of the board of greyhound racing but is also part of speedway futures Ltd