E I Addio

To be fair , Lakeside were really a four man team and although I cant fault Kyle Newman for effort he is no Richard Lawson. Ashley Birks is showing a bit more form now but still rides very wide and Mikkel Bech made his presence felt a bit more than of late. Mikkel was really the architect of Ashley's win over Robert Lambert. He tried really hard to team ride him home but Ash was riding so wide that Mikkel had too much track to cover and had to keep looking behind so much Lambert had every opportunity to slip through. Mikkel could have cleared off and won the race easily and it would still have been a 4-2 but I was impressed with his efforts to try to ride his team mate home. He has his critics but I have to say I do think he is a team player and deserves credit for that. Lambert apparently went out without a dirt deflector. Lakeside would still have won but it cost Lynn a point.. I don't know where you get this "intense hatred" from. Very OTT IMO . He was pretty much anonymous on his last visit but twice the rider this time. Goodness knows what's happened to Kenny bear. He used to be so good round Lakeside in his Peterboro days. His win over AJ shows he can still do it but just seems to vary from race to race.. To be brutally honest KL looked to me vey much like a one man band. based around Niels. Losing Rory is unfortunate and unlucky but after Lakeside's four consecutive home defeats Lynn should have been able to roll them over if they are seriously thinking about winning the play offs. Personally I think KL have lost the sparkle they had last year. It was a funny sort of match and I felt that either side could have won it but neither had the ability to take a lead and make it stick until heat 15 when the Lakeside pair were absolutely on a mission. For the first time I felt Kim looked completely comfortable in a heat 15 ride and he won it by a country mile, so good for him. So onwards and very slowly upwards for the Hammers, back to the drawing board for the Stars if they are going to get anything from the play offs.

Why would Matt Ford let Darcy go to Swindon ? Swindon are still potentially in touch with a play off position, and Darcy coukd propel them there which means he could then line up against the Pirates. On the other hand if Darcy went to a club with no chance of the play offs he would be available for Poole to use as a guest if Magic gets injured and with a bit of a push on Holders average Darcy coukd potentially guest for him as well. Just a thought on my part but no doubt a thought that has crossed Matts mind as well and we know how he likes to cover all his bases. Let's face it if Magic or. Holder were injured what better guest could there be ?

No he can't. He will be riding for Glasgow. Lakeside have a guest for him.....wait for it..... Kyle Newman. What a farce. It all is. R/R for Rory which means two of his rides taken by fast track reserves, and all Lawsons rides taken by a fast track reserve.j EDIT It may be two second strings and an EDR for Rory plus Ken the Bear but either way yet another meeting disrupted by unbalanced team strengths. Not poor Rory's fault of course but this seems to be happening every match now. On top of that after one meeting in 5weeks Lakeside now have 3 meetings in 8 days. No surprise the crowds continue to fall, not just Lakeside, everywhere.

The same probably goes for 75% of fans of EL clubs. Endless guests, often the same ones at the same tracks for different teams, great long gaps between fixtures so the season never really seems to get going, tracks that are supposedly safe up to heat 10 then suddenly become too dangerous to ride, fiddling averages, and of course the EDR shambles, to name just a few. Never felt so disenchanted with the sport in my life. The BSPA have really excelled themselves this year.

Assuming Batch's bike problems are genuine the difference in final scores is very similar to the difference between the two sides reserves, so yet again another match won by the BIG difference ar reserve , like most of them these days and yet another example of the dogs breakfast they have made of the Farce Track System. Whether it is blatant cheating or whether it is the luck of the draw with the EDR, makes no difference, either way they have gone up up yet another notch in driving more fans away. Is to much to ask that throughout the sport we get a fair, competive nights entertainment for our 18 quid?

I agree it's not pathetic statement and the thread is reaching pathetic levels where various posters are falling back on exaggeration and hyperbole to try to make their point, plus dressing up,opinion as fact To say the statement was "pathetic " is , IMO a gross exaggeration. I do think it was ill, considered though. The more you say about these things in this sort of situation the more material you give the critics to pull apart. It would have been far better to have done a two line statement simply saying something like " I apologise to,all fans and sponsors, and accept that it was not the behaviour nor expects of a World Champion" the leave it that. That way he gets the apology across without inflaming the debate and he gets respect at least and give him a certain amount of honour. However once I the decision is taken to put all the other things in the public domain the statement is fair enough but it just means his supporters agree and detractors will continue to find fault. That doesn't make it pathetic, it just doesn't take things any further. CHR's post is about right. We all blow our cool at times, especially on the sports field. That doesn't make it right but it makes it understandable. A few years ago I remember Matej Zagar throwing a punch at Piotr Swiderski during a race and that could have had fatal consequences and he was fined £300, so Gregs find seems pretty much par for the course. It will be like the Bruce Penall / Kenny Carter world final brouhaha in the early 80's, people are still arguing about that but one side still can't convince the other who was to blame. This I think will be the same. Talking in exaggerated terms about statements being pathetic when they are probably at best I'll-advised is not going to win anybody over.

Lot o f pompous comments on this thread by people who weren't there and didn't see it from behind the handlebars, and have never hit the ground at any kind of speed from a motorcycle. If it were riders like Jepson Jensen and Vaculik (for example ) it would hardly get a mention. Pedersen got excluded, Greg got fined. They are the usual penalties for this sort of thing. Thats about all there really is to it..

Stop wriggling. Your your phrase about Greg going off to meet Lee Richardson was in the poorest possible taste and crass in the extreme. The fact that you not only don't realise it but try to move the goal posts as if that's not what you said, really tells us all we need to know about you, irrespective of anyone's views on the Greg/Nicki incident.

That must be the sickest, most disgusting and most obnoxious line of any post that has ever appeared on the forum. Very rare for me to get wound up by anything on here, but that really is beyond the pale.

So is Nicki until he gets his crash helmet on.

The place was almost empty because a lot of the crowds scenes were not at a meeting, just actors drafted in. When do you ever see a Speedwáy crowd looking like that lot?

You are right but Bwitcher raised an interesting point that led me to do a bit of research on the excellent speedway.org site. You are correct to say that the inclusion of the Antipodeans enhanced the quality of the meeting just as the present day British Final would be enhanced by the inclusion of Holder, Doyle etc. but let's focus on the British riders for a moment In those days of course there were qualifying rounds at every BL track, every rider rode in three rounds and the 32 top scorers went into the two semis. Every single rider in each of the two semis was a genuine heat-leader, which is far removed from the situation today, BUT (and this is the point), none of them with the possible exemption of Nigel Boocok made much of an impression at World Final level, and those that did qualilfy didn't do it consistently, again with the arguable exception of Bocock. Having thought about it I don't think that Tai Bomber and Scott would have been out of place in the British Final of 50 years ago, and could well have managed a high enough finish to go on to the world final. Even Danny King and Craig Cook with their standard of gating probably would not be disgraced. So I would say that the average standard of riders in the British Final of 50 years ago was far higher than today, but I don't think the best Brits then were necessarily better than the best today. It's just that there were more of them then.

Ok, then the last sentence of your first paragraph sums the situation up and what we say is speculation without knowing how the BSPA approach it unless it going to vary from year to year and rider to rider like pretty much everything else that goes on in the sport and the fans complain about. If it's going to be judged entirely on the principle of bums on seats fair enough Lambert goes in although the decision was made weeks ago not after Monday. Personally I still don't think that's the ideal way of doing it because it still raises the question of why go through a qualifier if a rider is going to be put in anyway. Also if the bums on seats principle is the ruling principle then Darcy should get a GP wildcard for 2016 on the grounds of being "box office" but plenty of posters of the DW thread say he shouldn't get one so whichever way you go some will not be happy , that's why the test has to be objective not subjective ( in my opinion). Bottom line is the wildcard idea, like most other things that come out of the BSPA was someting plucked out the air without being thought through.

I have a problem with people who criticise the BSPA for inconsistency then want the same inconsistency themselves. Half the problem with the sport is inconsistent application of the rules. The precedent was set a few years ago (from memory I think 2010) when. Lee Richradson missed qualifying in exactly the same circumstances as Lambert i.e. crashed in the Semi. Rico , a former GP rider, heatleader on an 8 point average was not given a wild card. Fair enough, no arguments about that if the policy is we don't give wildcards to riders who crash out in the qualifiers. Having set the policy they would have to turn that on its head to now include Lambert. If they did include Lambert what happens when someone else crashes out in a qualifier? What is the criteria for deciding who gets a wild card and who doesn't ? If Lambert is to have a wildcard then you have to say that at least Bomber, Tai and Scott should get them if they crashed in the semis, so that also overturns the precedent they set with Rico. Then if you say Bomber should have a wildcard if he doesn't qualify what about Danny King or Craig Cook. The decision has to to be objective and not subjective. In other words you have to take Lambert out of the equation and say what is the the criteria we apply for giving wildcards. You can't give wild cards on the basis that we like this one but we don't like that one. The problem of course is thst not only are wildcards a nonsense in the first place, the BSPA have never really thought the criteria for using them. All we can say is that by not giving Lambert one at least they are being consistent with the decision not to give Rico one. People may not agree but at least there is consistency. The question nobody seems to want to answer is if you are going to wildcards to non qualifiers what objective criteria should be applied across the board. The other thing is once you start giving wildcards to non-qualifiers you start to make the idea of a competitive qualification process a bit pointless. Why not seed them straight through? As I said, it's tough on Lambert this year but will do him good in the long run.

Once again, if 8th place in one Semi Final is good enough for Garrity to be given a wild card , why is 8th place in the other Semi not good enough for Roynon to go through ? If Lambert is good enough for a wild card is everyone on higher average, ie King, Kennett, Lawson,Bomber, Cook etc also deserving of a wild card if they don't qualify, if not why not ? If Lambert is good enough for a wild card why make him go through the charade of him going through the qualifiers in the first place? Why not put straight through and take the competitive element out of it. Apart from the fact that the wild card system is a nonsense in the first place it won't do Lambert any harm to be subject to the same rules as everybody else and wait til next year. As. Sam Ermolenko has pointed out riders who come half way round the world to ride here have to learn to stand on their own two feet (well all except one of them, currently under suspension )Brits have home comforts and tend not to maintain their hunger . If Lambert turns out to be as good as people are predicting there will be plenty of other British Championships to come. Let him do it the hard way, it will do him good in the long run. In the meantime lets recognise that Adam Roynon is not exactly without talent and he needs to be rewarded for his efforts. British Speedwáy needs Roynon as much as it needs Lambert and your disparaging comments about him are really quite distasteful.

The F.I.M have said they will take urgent steps to discuss the matter with the nearest brick wall and they will abide by its decision.

[quote name="TheReturn" post="2627129" timestamp="1433944648 Bit of an irony there after calling other people stupid. Since Hancock has in the past been beaten by the likes of Justin Sedgemen and Robert Mear, the possibility of him being beaten by Lambert was always in the frame. Modern Speedwáy engines are so temperamental that the slightest error in set up or the most minor fault can have a big impact on speed. Greg looked very fast in his opening races, but when Lambert beat him he was also caught and passed by Morris. That is very unusual for Greg when he hits the front. When you consider that in a later heat Greg finished last after being passed by a Latvian who only scored 3 points in the whole meeting it does seem to indicate Gregs bike was not all it should be after the first few races.

To put it another way round, Lambert had not beaten any of the Aussies while King had only beaten one of them and that was from the gate. On the balance of probabilities the chances are that whichever one of the last 4 heats those two rode in they would have done no better than second, so whichever order they rode it is highly unlikely to have made any difference to the result I still find it difficult to fault Rosce's thinking. He certainly didn't cost GB the match or anything like that..

Why on earth would Greg want to put his world championship prospects at risk in a meeting that in the grand scheme of things for him was meaningless. There was very little money in it for him, his team had zero chance of qualifying and I guess his sponsors want to see him flying their flag in the GP's, and he does have massive sponsorship compared with a lot of them. Incidentally it looked to me that his bike was slowing a bit when Lambert passed and I though he was pretty much off the pace and just about hanging on by the time Morris went by. If Morris had been a Brit I wonder if people would have been raving quite so much about Lambert . I thought Morris was excellent, never let a single chance slip. His pass on Lambert was hard but that's the way world championships are won and lost. I am not Rosco's biggest fan but I think the critism of him is a bit unfair . Once you start telling a rider not to try to win you change the whole dynamics of a race and all sorts of unexpected things can go wrong. Absolutely right IMO opinion to save the two most experienced riders to the end . Lambert had already touched the tapes in a regular heat so who knows what he would have done under pressure if he was in at the end.

Is it mere coincidence that Magic is mentored by Greg Hancock, and like Hancock comes across as a fair, sporting and reasonable sort of bloke that is a credit to the sport. Ward is mentored by Muddlo and like Muddlo his behaviour and interviews do little to enhance the reputation of the sport. It is not a question of prejudice. Speedwáy may be a minority sport in a poor situation but the genuine fans do like to see its ambassadors conduct themselves with a degree of dignity and decorum. In all honesty do you think Middleditch's rantings in a Speedwáy Star and especially social media do anything at all to endear people to Poole Speedwáy or enhance the reputation of the sprt in general ? The same goes for Ward's off track conduct.

Since his main advisor seems to be Muddlo its not surprising he followed the example of his mentor and blew the opportunity to set the record straight.

Have you tried using a catheter ?

Therein lies the problem. When you look at the EL fixture list there seem to be plenty of dates and it all seems so simple but when you factor in the GP's and the Continental programme , and PL D/U availability it is extremely difficult to find dates when a full side can be put out. The Lakeside fixture list has a few Friday's reserved for rain offs but they obviously did not suit Belle Vue. I don't know where we go from here . The continental fixtures combined with excessive double uppers are ruining the domestic fixture list . In theory I suppose one answer might be dome sort of amalgamation between the two leagues but I don't know whether the finances would work out for that arrangement.

Why was it refused ? Perhaps due to the fact that Belle Vue have two D/U riders already committed to PL clubs with a Friday race night so they are likely to missing whenever you re-arrange it . Then you have. GP rider on each side so you would have to avoid GP weekends, and the SWC week is out anyway. On top of that you have Fricke still contesting the World U21's and Nilsson still in the GP qualifiers, so there are dates when they won't be available. Then you have to fit the whole thing around the existing fixtures for both clubs. So the reality is that the effects of the continental fixtures plus the amount of D/u riders means there are very few , if any convenient dates when the match could, be re-arranged without guests. and if you do postpone it you have the risk of rain offs on the restored date. It's all very well for Belle Vue to put out this propaganda about "not our fault guv, we offered a postponement" but unless they can say we offered x date when both sides had a full squad you are still stuck with guests.

Ah, a few years ago. He hasnt done it for some years, and as I said it's the responsibility of the MC anyway and Cook is no longer on the MC so he is certainly not responsibile for this years problems in any way. In any event whoever is doing the fixtures can only work to the availability dates each club provide so if they say they have a team available and half of them are riding elsewhere that's the fault of the club that provide the incorrect information not the person doing the list.