THE DEAN MACHINE

It flys in football, yes better racing will help but it’s not a prority, it won’t get new fans to come, I do ask people with knowledge , it’s ptetty much how I spend my speedway meetings these days , I still have friends in high places and I’m constantly asking them, running ideas by them, some of my posts are not my ideas but that of well respected members of the speedway community, not sure if you saw my Twitter spat over doubling up with Steve worral last year? But the backing I had for that huge and from well respected people, I don’t have all the answers and I try to base my ideas/thoughts on the fan perspective . To a point it doesn’t matter what me or you think it matters what the people who don’t go to speedway think

That is exactly what we need to do , the poles follow their teams , it’s all about their teams, the racing is secondary, when they put on individual meetings or anything other than a team meetings the crowd drops alarmingly even with top riders because all that matters is their team, we had that and bit by bit diluted it to the point now where there is barely any teams , it is great to have loads of passing on a good track but first we need to get the fans in and we won’t do that by making the entry into the bends wider

Yes but they physically are different engines as it’s not worth having them changed every weekend and then changed back so they have different engines

Here is 2 examples of my fan experience at a speedway meeting Monday night I went to wolves vSwindon , no passing not even close racing, scoreline never in doubt so not a close meeting . Crowd was average but silent, no atmosphere,feels like no hero’s for fans to cheer, stadium pretty good and at £18 I felt ripped off, not in a rush to go back there even though it’s ny local track, last season I went to Gdańsk v Torun , the meeting had no passing and scoreline wasn’t close and never in doubt, pretty dull meeting ,crowd was massive and the atmosphere was amazing,the stadium is Wooden benches on concrete steps, the home fans went nuts for their hero’s and at £4 to get in it felt like a bargain and we had a blast and can’t wait to go over again ,speedway is all about the fan experience

They use different engines anyway in poland as they do here so it wouldn’t be extra expense it would just be a change of expense, a riders british engine won’t go anywhere in poland now so what’s the problem if he had to use a standard engine here, they may look the same but they are different engines here and abroad

Speedway’s problems are not what happens inside the safety fence, speedway isn’t and never will be a motorsport, it’s a team sport on bikes, it’s all about the fan experience but we have lost sight of that in the last 20 years, I say this as someone as a lover of bikes, engines etc”the bikes don’t matter never have “ ,.haven’t Glasgow’s crowds off quite a bit recently . While it would be nice to have nice stadiums and tracks it won’t make a difference to the sports issues , the product is wrong and bloated

What ever way we take we are going out on a limb and is going to be painful, so we need to step back regroup and try to make the sport great again, GB set up will keep those riders good enough to compete on the world stage up to that standard but the bread and butter speedway in Britain has got to step away from the speedway we know, nobody really wants to do it but what is the alternative ?

The cost cutting with engines has nothing to do with general cost cutting, faster and faster more expensive engines serves no benifit to speedway, yes we would be going out on a limb but poland also believe that something should be done about engines but they are not sure what, as hard as it would be to implement a standard engine of some sort which effectively eliminates the external cost of engines would be a great step forward for speedway with no downside to the quality of the sport world wide and we should be seeking to make this happen, talking to a top rider last year he was saying half his engine bills and you could half his earnings as his take home pay would still be the same

Yes the top boys are making a mint but that’s not true of the lesser riders , some of the deals the reserves are on is poor, I agree it’s not cheap, my point is the sport is pretty much finished as a professional sport in Britain for now and needs to realise this and accept it and build itself back up which is going to take time ,riders are going to get less money, I’m trying to give something back to them, I don’t really care if they loose money but I would rather the sport moves forward and it’s cheaper for the riders and more importantly the fans, I didn’t raise the point of track size someone else did I was just replying to it, the NSS doesn’t have a lot of dirt, it’s a relatively slick track but what dirt it does have works because of the speed you can carry into it but if it were made grippy the racing would be poor just like the world team cup semi final last year, it was a one line boring meeting because the rain got into the surface and made more dirt

After reading Ronnie Russell’s comments in the star it got me thinking maybe Swindon, wolves belle vue and Poole should apply to join the polish extraleague, logistically is very easy and I’m sure the fans would back it, only drawback is affording the teams to compete

Some is, I would say it’s not much different to what it’s always been but for whatever reason last night was awful

The laydown revs a lot more although by now even on uprights they would of got the revs up but the biggest difference is the chassis they are in, uprights are a fair bit more ridged, the problem isn’t the laydown engine, it’s the type of laydown engine, the early longstoke laydown we’re probably the best engine the sport has ever had

Developed into what ? Bikes that don’t work in the wet or on anything other than a billiard table of a track, if tracks need to be like BV then why are the crowds so low ? Even the poles are looking into engines, tracks have worked before with different engines, and people who think big tracks are the answer are wrong, 2 big tracks in poland are Gdańsk and gorzow, both get big crowds both have poor racing . I don’t think people are grasping how close other teams are to going the same way as rye house and it’s nothing to do with the size of the tracks or the engines being ridden, but unless costs are addressed the riders are going to be well out of pocket

There is a job just made for you waiting at ACU house rugby

In all my years that I have gone to wolves that has to be one of the worst matches I have ever witnessed, it was dreadful

Sometimes wow just about covers it

Yes they are bitch but that tells you the bikes are at fault not the track the reality is we can’t make the tracks bigger so it’s the bikes that have to change, the riders and the tuners have dictated the engine direction because there is no controls in place, Warsaw ,Cardiff, horsens and gustrow are all small tracks and they seam to enjoy them, the problem is a lot of modern day riders learnt with the throttle only working one way, maybe it’s time to go back to speedway school, personally I preferred the tight technical tracks but I was riding engines that were fit for the purpose, i keep getting told it’s progress and engines have evolved, evolved into what ? Evolved into engines that need wide open spaces and no hint of rain, progress ???? We are going backwards

The size of the track doesn’t make a difference and to a point neither does a patchy surface but a narrow track does make a lot of difference , tonight’s meeting in gustrow was as good as any meeting at belle vue and it’s a small track about the size of buxton and it was rough and bumpy but as always at this track it produced good racing as it is wide and has good width entry into the corners ,tracks are not the problem although width would help it’s the bikes that are the problem, there is nothing wrong with small tracks that isn’t speedways problem

Tracks are not too small, gustrow proved that today and bikes are not really any faster than they were 30 years ago, the back wheel speed has increased but the bike speed is pretty much the same but you don’t need a magic wand what you need is someone to get control of the machinery and stop the free for all which has gone on for years but it won’t happen cause the tail wags the dog and while it does the sport is cooked

Never understood why they have the GP at teterow when this track is less than 30 miles away and racing is miles better

Gustrow is one of those tracks that prove you can have good racing on small tracks , it has plenty of lines

I would be mortified if any of my customers were not happy with my service, without them I don’t have a business

You all know how the country felt after the football on Wednesday, well that’s how I feel about the way british speedway is being run, my sport, my life and it bloody hurts

Not only are they silent and secretive but they also silence those within who dare to speak out

As soon as this torid season is over, the first agm on November 1st and the first question is a simple one , do we want british speedway to be a competitors sport like Moto GP, motox etc or do we want to be a team fan sport like it has always been, a team sport on motorbikes, if it’s the first then there is no point perusing the team aspect and make it pay to race with prize money, if it’s the second then the bikes,riders, cost, presentation and the team ethic need to be looked into and changed , currently we are trying be be the fan based team sport but being run like a competitor sport and it doesn’t work, there is hardly any control over mechanical side of the sport and riders and tuners are pushing and pushing but in reality all they are pushing is the cost up and many fans and potential fans couldn’t care less, to prove this point something I would like to see is take a meeting like poole v belle vue and get the riders to all use a basic no frills engine used by all 14 riders but don’t tell the fans, the fact is hardly anyone would notice because it’s not something they care about , it’s all about the riders and their teams, we need to push the team model