THE DEAN MACHINE

perhaps you missed the bit where riders are owed money all over the place because the money isn't there , nobody is saying they are overpaid just that the money isn't there with the current crowd levels and to get the crowds coming back you need to dangle the temptation carrot and the first point of call is always price ,sorry It doesn't make pleasant reading but niether does the headlines of clubs going bust

there will always be riders , just maybe not the standard that we have now

totally agree one of the worst things ever to happen to team speedway, it has no merit or credibility for fans , it's good for riders but as I've asked before who is the most important fans or riders ?

Reading the piece in the speedway star about CVS walking through the pits after his last double header in 2015 when his team had lost to both belle vue and then Leicester and he said the riders didn't seem to care , they were laughing and joking like it didn't matter , well that's how a lot of ex supporters feel about modern riders

and well done to Redcar but with more expensive better riders planning to double up , the gap between the redcar's and the glasgows will be bigger than ever

good theory but wrong , what will happen is the likes of Workington will try to afford the same to compete and pay above what they can afford and you get the Workington / Plymouth situation all over again. I thought the agm was ok but until more people attend speedway the business model for the sport doesn't work . You can't pay out more than you get in

Putting aside the issues of doubling up/down , are the likes of bomber and watt going to ride for premier money when they double down ? I doubt it , so how is this helping the likes of Workington or any premier team financially ?

I won't mention the name but I was told that a current manager had been asked to belle vue manager next season by the Bspa and he turned them down , I took the information with a pinch of salt but they also told me about the rent , the riders and the outgoing promotors , so who knows

if the GTR is the route we are taking then British speedway need to make sure all the parts are holomagated and only those parts can be used and no additional work can be done to the parts , in other words keep it a GTR otherwise we will be back to square one , I expect speedway star to run a full page spread from pjr about how it won't work

Is there any wage capping introduced in the AGM ? Or are we still going to be paying out more than what's coming in ?

well if you believe that to be true and we don't find the riders then the team aspect of the sport is finished

we don't see where the riders are coming from because of doubling up /down , there are enough potential riders going round but the same old faces keep popping up in every team , it's just a joke ,the general public don't buy into it and I can see why , it's only my love of all things speedway is the reason I buy into it

IMO the basics are scrapping doubling up / down and reintroducing real team speedway , not this mercenary driven free for all we currently have and admission costs reduced , until these are addressed I don't think we will ever begin to recover , we have to dangle a temptation carrot to the wider public, I keep seeing riders tweets about what's in this agm for them ? What about the fans ?

one club offered me £275 a week (some are on more)march to October to mechanic for one of their riders , I turned it down as I wasn't really interested in doing it , don't really have the time and if I'm honest I can't stand the rider but the club has got mechanics on the pay roll

in theory the rev limiter is the best idea but the thought of hitting the limiter mid turn and for a second the bike misfires and the back wheel grabs and throws you forward and at that point your revs come under the limit so you get 100% revs back it's is a disaster waiting to happen , it works in other motorsports cause they are 100% drive so when you hit limiter you just can't go faster but speedway needs the wheel spin , whatever the idea the engine needs not to able to reach whatever limit , not be able to reach it and then trigger the limiter

I don't know if they would cheaper you would have to ask gerhard about that , there is part of me that wants to make a comeback at NL level on a weslake to see if it's possible to be competitive on a 30 year old bike , just to show that costs are over hyped at that level but then my brain kicks in and I go back to my pipe and slippers

the GTR is possibly the answer for the premier and elite league but it must stay a GTR and have no other parts or tuning allowed but I think at £5000 a go it is a bridge to far for the national league , I was talking to a national league rider last Sunday who had borrowed one for the day , I asked him is this the future for you and his reply was "not at £5000 it isn't ", I was thinking about the second hand market for these engines but that depended on the price of the parts

this is the point I made in other posts , the riders and the tuners are the ones controlling the sport , when I make the sort of posts usually on Facebook I get stick from riders and if I make the point to someone from the Bspa I get told these things get done to help the rider but neither mention or even seem to give a damn about the fans and contrary to the belief of many in the sport the fans are the ones that matter the most , I would love the sport to be covered in Money and every rider to be paid a fortune but unfortunately it isn't and that's the fact of it , yes it's a job for some but lately it seems that if you buy a couple of bikes some think they have made it and deserve to be paid the world and promotors seem to be agreeing even though they can't afford , I get the riders will try elsewhere to get what they are after but it needs s collective stand from promotors , riders have become mercenary's and I really do believe that the fans feel this and the bond between fans and riders has been lost because of it , I am forever asking ex riders , ex fans or anybody who was a part of speedway their feelings about it now and they all seem to paint the same picture about where we are , I was in a room at the start of this year where a NL rider was talking about his new team and how he wanted a van from them and they said no and his points money, it wasn't the best in the league but was certainly above most , he said I will turn up with one crap bike because they don't derserve anything else and I can't wait to Guest for another team as they pay more, all I kept thinking was i hope his fans never hear this attitude , riders are going down the wrong road for the sports good and the promotors are letting it happen but it's pointless pointing the finger of blame, we are where we are it's what we going to do about it that matters

one aspect which I do think should be addressed is the extra's that riders get from clubs , firstly I would just like to say riders deserve millions however the millions are not there so something has to change ,I recently saw the demands of a premier league rider and points money aside he was asking for the equivalent of £10000 in add on's up front , add on's being flights,van,mechanic ,workshop,signing on fee + a few other things and this seems to be the norm these days, ive even heard of national league riders asking for some of these things , now can clubs really afford this ? if all 7 wanted this then that's £70000 even before a wheel has been turned , I heard today of one of the tracks in financial trouble hadn't paid the lease money for their reserve riders van and it was returned to the company ,why is he even getting a van ? this didn't happen 10 years ago, i really do think that some riders have lost perspective of why they ride and where the sport is financially ,maybe these deals are ok in the elite league but I do think the premier has got to return to be a semi pro league as it was at the turn of the millennium ,we are getting national league riders turning down meetings because they only pay £10 a point, some will say its not enough we are struggling to make it pay , its the national league your in its not supposed to make it pay, we have to nip this in the bud now ,this is about the future of our sport if it has one

the real point is never expect a fair solution from someone who benefits or loses from the outcome because they will always look after no1 , a tuner will never put himself out of business to make the sport better, but you go and talk to them and they are the first to tell you the sport is knackered , they may be right but then tell them they are a part of the problem

aparently they couldn't make it work any more but I heard Nicki shoved her in to the shelves in the fruit and veg section while doing the morning shop , he said "she saw some banana's on offer but I was getting to them first "

Nicki pedersen for 2017 world champion ?now barbie is off the scene

to be fair to them they only do what the riders want but when they start to be a well known as the riders you have a problem , costs have rocketed in the last few years and I believe that's part down to tuners sourcing their own parts which are for that little bit of something extra but ultimately costs a lot more

a sort of system would work at any level , unfortunately the sport is currently run unofficialy by the tuners with the riders backing and that isn't going to change anytime soon even if the riders were to benefit from it , a soon as the powers try something all hell breaks loose we end up back at square one ,

I know but im thinking about the sports already embarrassing reputation , can we really afford another big embarrassment ? I agree he shouldn't get off scott free but I care about my beloved sport and just feel this will make us more of a mickey mouse sport in the eyes of the general public