E I Addio

That isn’t clear. It was originally listed on the BSPA site as a 2.30 start but when the line up was confirmed on the 20th Sept the start was given as 1 pm. It’s not clear why it was changed or whether the BSPA site was wrong ( not for the first time ) when the time was stated as 2.30.Nothing to suggest it either was or wasn’t changed at Lakesides request.

Well, mor precisely it wasn’t applied two weeks earlier but whether it was there or not,we don’t seem to know. There are two separate things here. The first is whether the paying public were cheated. That we don’t know as far as the curfew was concerned. Answer possibly yes. Second question : did Lakeside cheat by applying a phoney curfew to gain an advantage ? I can’t see that they did. 10 points is not a massive advantage to take to an away track.Bearing in mind Lawson and Morris could go out in heat 15 and Newman more often than not makes heat 14 his own,if I were TM I would go for it and try to build a bigger advantage. Also Mick Bates is no fool. If he was told falsely that there was a curfew when there wasn’t there would be repercussions. I am pretty sure Mick would have checked that out anyway. Alls well that ends well. To decent teams deservedly get one cup final each , despite Godfreys attempts to wreck the season for both of them. Leave it at that.

Am I missing something about this curfew ? Lakeside couldn’t possibly have won on aggregate so why would they claim there was a curfew for tactical reasons if there wasn’t one?

I Wish someone would Tippex Rob Godfreys name off the Management Committee of the BSPA.

Yep. This has all the hall marks of a typical Lakeside season.Ive lost count of the times the team have a good run in the league, make the play offs or get close to them then get cut down by injuries when it comes to the crunch. Nothing you can do about it, but it's frustrating when the cookie always seems to crumble the same way. It's been a really good team to watch this year with everyone chipping in with points, and it's a team that get in well and support each other. Once Kyle went out with that wrist injury Ithough the writing was on the wall, but I woukd like to finish the season with the team more or less intact. All very frustrating, but it's just the way the sport goes unfortunately.

Who suggested that ?

Cook is undoubtedly a class act . . I don't know what's happened to bomber. I have seen him score double figures for Coventry at Lakeside and he was a ruthless overtaker but the old spark seems to be missing a bit these days. Still a formidable rider but not quite the man he was.

I'd say a lot more than that. The biggest crowd in recent years for a league fixture was 2,700 for a Bank Holiday meeting against the old enemy Eastbourne several years ago. I would say it was at least that many, probably a little more, probably approaching 3000. The start was delayed by 15 minutes because they were still coming in. If only we could have a crowd like that for a meeting like that every week

What are Lakeside Live qualifications to come to that conclusion? They weren’t on the track As someone who was there, I can assure you there was a long, long meeting on bend 3 before the meeting, involving the referee , team managers , track curator, clerk of the course,promoters and senior riders, before the meeting, followed by a track walk by the referee , and clerk of the course on their own before the referee authorised the meeting to go ahead.

The bloke in the pub. And we all know what that means.

A couple of weeks ago six out of seven PL teams managed to race on the same night. Are you seriously telling us that six out of eleven CL teams can’t manage it ? The reason most clubs w@nt Friday race nights is because that is when they get the biggest crowds. It is when most fans want to go. Can you name any other organisation that won’t open on the day most of its customers want to do business ? Godfrey and Chapman are worse than useless. The sport has reached a new low under their stewardship. They have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to improve the sport during their time in charge.

I think that's the point. I am pretty sure they are not licensed for Championship league racing

Does Rye House still have a license ? I don't think it does.

I only saw him ride at the end of his career , when he was past his best but still a class above most. The thing that stands out in mind is that he was such great stylist. He almost turned riding a motorbike into an are form. We can argue about who was the greatest but very, very, few will be held in the high esteem that everybody who ever saw Ronnie ride will hold him.

Paul Hurry is the son of Graham Hurry, top grass tracker of the 70's.

Eastbourne as well is under threat I hear. As far as Lakeside is concerned the development is probably still some way off because, as I understand it ther3 still has to be risk assessment for environmental impact and pollution. As the was previously a sand pit or quarry it seems quite possible there will need to be clean up of the site which could be expensive, even prohibitive. Things are very much in the air at the moment and could go either way, but Jon Cook seemed very adamant that he wants to keep Speedway alive in the South East.

In summary Cooks comments were ,- The Woodroffe family that owned the site sold it to developers last year but remained as tennants rather than owners, They now want to move out completely. It was disingenuous of them to try to blame falling Speedway attendances in their press releases based on last years National League crowds because since coming up to th e CL attendances have trebled. The site has provisional planning permission for houses but that is conditional on the being a Speedway track as well as schoolsetc incorporate,d on the site. The new owners are interested in retaining motor sport on site and Cook will be talking to them a bout this. If some othe t motor sport development is involved ok will try to strike a deal with them for the continuation of Speedway. Cook cant guarantee Speedway next year but there are avenues still to be explored and he and Stuart Douglas will continue fighting for it. It seems to me the biggest obstacle is probably Rob Godfrey.

It’s horses for courses, surely? There are some riders that perform first/ second bend cut backs at Lakeside that would be difficult at certain other tracks. On the other hand there are riders like Scott Nicholls who has shown in the last couple of days that he is a class act at both tracks at both tracks. That’s what makes the sport so interesting, different riders having different capabilities.

You also have to look at the context of riders. When you get riders of the quality of Schlein and Nichols at this level of league on an 8/9 point average the chances are there are only about two riders in the opposing side capable of beating them. Scott’s gating in particular was superb last night but the downside is that once he got in front he won by a country mile, and there’s few riders in any team in this league that can catch him on that sort of form. There was no passing in heat 13 after bend 2 lap one but it was a cracking race with Nichols and Schlein right up Morris’ exhaust pipe for the whole race, so that still makes for a good meeting. Ippo are a decent side overall and can justify a place in th3 play offs. Quite a bit of dust last night which makes it difficult to pass from the minor placings, but dust unfortunately is inevitable when you have 90 degree temperatures during the day. Overall I think the track curator did a good job in very difficult conditions. Despite the dust the track stood up pretty well and the actually surface was pretty good right to the end, with very few ruts.

If the hijackers will now let us get this thread back in line with its title, it is interesting that Speedway Star have devoted a whole page to an interview with Rob Godfrey and he has simply used it to blame everyone but himself for the trouble he has caused in having fixtures removed from the fixture list. Fixtures, that is, that Godfrey and his (mis) Management Committee, had approved before the season started and the fans relied on. This is the problem with this blinkered shower on the Management Committee (and I use the term "management " in its loosest possible sense) , they are apparently unaware that the sport is on its knees and each time they mess up in this way, more fans walk away. It really is a disgrace and unacceptable for the person whose committee is supposed to be running the sport , to blame other people for the problem he caused. If Scunthorpe hadn't needed guests none of this would have arisen. Still at least we have a member of the (mis) Management Committee acknowledging there is a problem. Until now we have simply had fixtures being pulled out of the list and a month of conspicuous silence from the MC, who have carried on as if nothing had happened, completely ignoring the fans.. I doubt whether Godfrey and his mates could run a stall in a Women's institute jumble say successfully. Incompetent beyond belief

A bad situation made much worse by Rob Godfrey interfering with the fixture list and cancelling meetings.

That is already the case . If a rider has had one warning to sit still Rule 15.16(b) applies : “ For a second offence by the same rider in the same heat a mandatory disqualification with no replacement permitted” i.e, the rider is out of the race, no replacement no going off 15 metres.

Of the meetings I see, which admittedly tends to be Lakeside these days the correct procedure is invariably followed. The rules require the start marshal to ensure the riders are correctly positioned be fore he hands over to the referee, who then has to put the green light on as soon as the start Marshall is clear, then release the tapes after a minimum delay of 1.5 seconds to allow riders to get their engines spinning. I practical terms that mean from the time the start Marshall hands over to the referee there is less than two seconds before the green light comes on which is not enough time for riders to start faffy about pulling bikes back and forth before concentrating on the green light. Because of the nature of the sport and the heightened state of tension the riders are in at the start it is almost inevitable that once or twice a meeting the merest distraction will cause a twitchy clutch finger to move. But there is another aspect to this that I have only noticed in the last few meetings. Richard Lawson for example is noted as a very good gater but recently I have noticed that he is almost always first up to the tapes allowing himself a full two minutes or more to do his “ gardening, which he is usually quite fussy about, and still allow a bit of time to start getting his head in gear for the race. The result is he more often than not gets either a fist bend lead or positions himself for a second bend cut back. A lot of his points come that way. On the other hand riders that are a bit late to the gate and then start messing around with clutches or goggles or just kicking a bit of dirt around , tend, I think, to be the ones jumping the start. Not always the case, but very often is.

The rules already require the riders to be lined up 75 mm ( 3inches) from the tapes. You can't realistically get any closer than that without touching them. Speedway is a sprint and in any sort of sprint people will at times jump the start. Look at any big athletics meeting. The 100 metres final will often have two or three false starts because the athletes are twitchy. Compare that with the 5000 metres where the start is less important and false starts are virtually unheard of.

Under Rule 15.2.1 each race should start no more than 4 minutes after the finish of the previous one, including the two minute allowance. As soon as the two minute allowance is finished the riders come under the direction of the start Marshall and have to be ready to start. Therefore a rider who gets to the gate say thirty seconds after the two minutes comes on he has a minute and a half to prepare his start but one who gets there as the time expire has no time. Most referees that I see these days seem to keep meetings ticking over at a reasonble pace.