Arch Stanton

Wrong. He confirmed his season was “100% over” on the 9th of August after visiting the specialist for his 9 week check up. It was always likely to be the case, but he clearly hadn’t totally given up on returning despite what was said back in May. https://www.fimspeedway.com/news/doyle-confirms-2024-season-over# On your second point, nobody is asking for any sympathy. It doesn’t matter whether it’s been 3 months or 3 weeks, the fact is no suitable rider has been interested in coming over. I know they’ve held extensive talks with several top tier riders and came extremely close on one occasion but couldn’t manage to persuade him to do the deal. Both your club and King’s Lynn have faced the same problem. You can’t just wave an imaginary wand and easily replace the leagues best rider. Sure, they could probably have signed Troy Batchelor to replace Doyle, but who in their right mind would do that? (With all due respect to Troy).

Ahh the old soooperfan stuff! Good for you.

The whole structure of the leagues is up in the air at the moment. Thursdays are going to be an issue here and problems need resolving.

He was at the King’s Lynn meeting a few weeks ago. He’s been having a lot of physio and treatment in Poland since his injury. On you saying people are “not supporters” for leaving early, I can understand them personally. When Ellis crashed out it was one kick in the nuts too many for some people. The meeting was dead from a result point of view, the track was slick and the racing dreadful. Everything stacks up sometimes and I personally don’t blame people for getting off early. It wasn’t a mass exodus by any means, but a few had seen enough.

I’ve already said I think we’ll finish fourth and some have said I was pessimistic. Do people not realise the absolute state we’re currently in? The guts have been ripped out of the side. We’ve had youngsters at the bottom end of the team that have all improved, they’ve been a big reason why we’ve topped the table all season long despite the injury problems further up. But it’s a different kettle of fish riding without any pressure when the top boys are scoring maximums, to suddenly being the important riders who HAVE to score points. You also lose that inspiration that having Doyle and Emil in the pits brings to the younger members of the side. They almost certainly pull them along. The whole atmosphere at Ipswich has changed in recent weeks even before Emil’s crash and when Ellis crashed out early against Leicester it killed the meeting stone dead. People were leaving before heat 8 which never happens. We have four meetings left, Sheffield Belle Vue and Birmingham at home and Birmingham away. I think we’ll win one of those, Birmingham at home on the final fixture.

Sheffield Belle Vue Leicester Ipswich

Don’t be daft.

This. We’ve done remarkably well to still sit top without Doyle since the end of May. The likes of Rew, Ellis and Thompson have all ridden above their averages and we’ve battled hard to compensate his absence. Even Jenkins has stepped it up in recent weeks. But losing Emil as well is a killer. You look at the line up on Thursday and there isn’t enough top end strength there. We know Nicholls is decent around Foxhall, but he’s guested seven times at home this year and failed to hit double figures on four occasions. He’s no Doyle replacement and to be fair was never expected to be with all due respect to him. Our biggest problem is going to be Sheffield on Monday when even Nicholls won’t be available. You’re probably looking at R/R and possibly Blodorn covering the top two. That has disaster written all over it.

We were finishing top don’t think there’s any doubt about that. All we needed to do was remain unbeaten at Foxhall and I think we’d have done that reasonably comfortably. Not likely now so I guess it doesn’t matter a great deal although would have been handy to avoid Belle Vue in the semi cos we can’t ride the place but it is what it is. All we can hope for now is that Emil is properly fit for the play offs, and by that I mean fit enough to be at his best and not just fit enough to take part and not do himself justice, and we get a strong guest for Doyle. Then we can give it our best crack.

The plan was as of a couple of weeks ago, that Lindgren would be guesting for Doyle for both Cup final legs and all play off meetings.

He scored 7 from 5 rides including two duck eggs around the NSS a couple of weeks back. He looked far quicker there in the Speedway of Nations though so you have to ask the question, how much is he putting in to the league meetings for Birmingham? He now has an actual average of 7 and a half, pretty poor for a rider of his quality.

Can’t sign anybody now even if a suitable rider becomes available. The powers that be would rather we used guests from other clubs.

You have to wonder whether the club were still holding out hope (albeit slim) that he could be back for the play offs. It seems from reading that that he didn’t totally rule it out until his recent check up. Always better to be safe than sorry and do further damage by pushing it. Personally it just hasn’t been the same at Foxhall without him. Massive miss. Already looking forward to seeing him banging in the Foxhall maximums in March.

This was released a few days ago GM https://www.fimspeedway.com/news/doyle-confirms-2024-season-over

So Emil is still in hospital and waiting for an operation before he returns home to Poland. Was hoping for a little more positive news than that. It was said he was likely to be out of Hospital at the weekend. We now have less than three weeks until the cup final against Sheffield. Hate being defeatist but it looks like we need snookers.

https://ipswichwitches.co/raceday-preview-leicester-rowe-motor-oil-premiership-r2-h/

Think it’ll be Nicholls and R/R personally, which isn’t ideal to put it mildly. Leicester riding far better than they did when they got thumped earlier in the season here.

Are either or both Kurtz and Bewley based in the UK? Don’t think Kurtz is but Bewley? If they’re not, then you can understand neither changing their plans to fly in for a guest booking. The Ipswich promotion will almost certainly be asking the question though as they’re the only option they have. These new rules are a joke. Even if a rider now makes themselves available Ipswich couldn’t sign them as a temporary replacement, they’d have to use guests instead. Why not use more common sense to these daft rules? What’s wrong with not allowing strategic changes after a certain point, but allowing a signing to replace an injured rider?

People are talking about this particular meeting though, not historically. And the fact remains that leaving a huge pile up of dirt on the outside was dangerous, and poor from the Sheffield track staff.

https://x.com/klspeedway/status/1821921709395431543?s=61&t=WGGG_bqEEeOH78cfmD9Reg

If Leicester don’t beat us then Sheffield probably will the following Monday. Severely limited options. We’ve carried the loss of Doyle brilliantly since May but trying to cover the best top two in the league with the options available is impossible. Fully expect Sheffield to now finish top, meaning we’ll more than likely face Belle Vue in the semi finals if Leicester don’t pip them and finish 3rd.

https://x.com/watchspeedway/status/1821869232453206063?s=46

I wouldn’t rule out Leicester leapfrogging Belle Vue yet the way they’re riding. Currently 5 behind with two meetings in hand.

Having just gone through the remaining fixtures of both clubs, if Ipswich remain unbeaten at Foxhall, then realistically Sheffield are going to have to win at the NSS to finish top. Sheffield, Belle Vue and the form horse Leicester, still have to visit Foxhall so still some difficult hurdles to jump over.