THE DEAN MACHINE

I sort of class myself as the old guard but im trying to cut costs for the riders because come next season and they have their pay halved they will be moaning like hell , its not that I don't want them to have it, I couldn't really care less what they spend but being an ex rider I want to help them

but this goes back to my old argument that speedway isn't a motorsport, it never has been, it a team sport on motorbikes , that's been its appeal since day one, its not like any other motorsport, ( the twitter poll seems to agree with me )we have never appealed to dirt or road track fans on mass,i always think of my mrs as the typical fan, she has been to speedway all her life yet she couldn't tell you the difference from a jawa to a gm or a weslake to a jap and we own all of the above, to her its a bike and that is typical to the majority of speedway fans including the ones that have left the sport, what she can identify with is the riders and her team. to address the racing you need to address the bikes and you disagreed with that but changing tracks will do nothing there will still be bad meetings even on the best tracks that is the nature of the sport

for the first timer it is all about the experience they feel, a female couldn't give two hoots about a pass in every race and the best meeting of the season, but if she is with mates and they are having a blast and everyone around them is too it will give them a good experience, I hate football with a passion but I got invited to stoke v man utd last season, I found being in the middle of the fans fascinating, I couldn't even tell you the score as I didn't really care much for the match but it was an enjoyable experience soley because of the passion of the fans from both sides, and that's what speedway is about, speedway has lost a couple of major things, the team ethic and the social side, it had both back in the day and both brought the enjoyment to the fan experience,i had friends that used to go to speedway just to pull women as the bar was full of them, the racing is no worse today than it was in the 60s 70s 80s 90s ,it has good days and has bad, good tracks and bad tracks always has always will, the racing can always be better but we need to get the public to attend first ,we need to address cost to the public,we need to make them feel like they are getting a bargain and that its the place to be seen ,then the old saying" put a pile of dog poo in a city street people will walk past it, get 30 people to stand round the same poo and other people will stop to have a look" "a crowd attracts a crowd attracts a crowd and so on " we all want good racing on good tracks but as I said most newcomers especially women don't care for motorcycle racing of any kind as good as it can be but they do care for having a good time with their friends and a crowd going nuts for their team is very infectious

Where are cardiff getting the shale from ? I keep reading the shale the tracks are buying is rubbish and the meeting I saw at wolves Monday pretty much proved it so where are cardiff getting it from and if it’s the right stuff why are british tracks not getting it from the same place

Ive started a poll on twitter so see how fans view speedway ,as a team sport on bikes like football rugby etc or a motorsport for competitors like MotoGP, motox etc m, feel free to vote @deanfelton1

Because there are not enough available dates at wolves , they had to ride some at brum last year just to complete their fixtures , your just one fan not a crowd, I drive 400 miles a day and I think nothing of it but some of my friends think I’m mad as anyrhingvover 30 miles is a night out, for what’s it’s worth I don’t think there should be any teams running from another track

Cradley does work , their crowds have been on par with many top teams, including their hosts they still get more than some teams in the championship even though they are not in the league and it was not too bad at stoke ,,their crowds were not too bad for a track 50 miles away ,Coventry doesn’t because it’s quite far away and many don’t trust Horton or like him

isn't it strange how 15 years+ ago riders could make ends meet just riding for one team and they were on a lot less money than they are today, so whats changed? the cost of the engines,tuning /servicing or whatever you want to call it has rocketed pretty much doubled and for what ?1mph , many say the racing is worse but it certainly hasn't got better as much as I have sympathy with the riders, life is tough, there has been enough time to see the end coming and to make the bikes cost less to help themselves but riders are not interested, they are happy pouring money out to external sources to have a product which is no better than it was 25 years ago but the answer from acu house will be to put £2 on admission and make all riders double up even more, so as I see it after listening to some on here is to scrap team racing altogether and make it a competitors sport where riders pay to race and earn big prize money and the riders can ride as much as their hearts desire, then the tracks will make money so they can make them bigger and have better racing and we can all just remember team speedway as an outdated concept that nobody really cared about so we signed it off to the history books.

But you said all tracks should be like belle vue and when that was on the tv the racing was great and yet belle vue is on its arse , wolves crowds are bigger than belle vue yet BV has better racing

Before a new fan or even an ex fan gets to see the track or it’s racing we need to get them to the turnstiles, as I said priority’s

There are a few but read all my posts from the last year I have pretty much covered every angle from bikes, riders, fans, cost and more , I have done pretty much the sport from all angles and now as a fan again I know what I want and I’m asking other fans and ex ones what they want from speedway and my posts reflect the answers I get

More non fans would turn up to see 20 bad crashes on a crap track than 15 brilliant races on a perfect track, making a track perfect with perfect racing will do nothing to attract new fans

And that’s cool and your perspective is not wrong but I think it’s in the minority riders aside

Growing up I was a wolves fan and that’s all that mattered, as a rider I became that team I rode and they became my fans, that’s how team sport works no matter if it Britain poland or Jamaica,speedway football or hockey, speedway is a team sport and that’s what matters to fans, always has

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