E I Addio

1. I am not on twitter and don't intend to be. Anyone who goes on there knows its a channel for abuse so it seems sensible to keep away. 2. I am not the Team GB manager so your second point is irrelevant. but whoever takes the job has to be able to deal with criticism with a bit of dignity, otherwise they just bring themselves and the sport into disrepute. Muddlo would have a lot more respect if he could just rise above that kind of personal abuse., and bring a bit of dignity to the job. 3. I don't have a personal grievance against him but I do think he is a well over-rated TM. Because the Lakeside pits are open to the public before and after the meetings you get to see a bit more of what goes on than a lot of places. My personal view is that in recent years Poole have had two great captains in Dave Watt and Chris Holder and in my opinion it has been those two , especially Holder that has stamped his authority and personality on the Poole team. If you watch people like Peter Adams or Phil Morris at work there is no doubt about who is in charge, and it aint any of the riders. But anyway the point of this particular thread is who is suitable to be Team GB manager. Muddlo hardy showered himself in glory. I don't think Roscoe is the sharpest tool in the box but he is enthusiastic and he does speak the riders language, so at this stage of things he is probably the right man to pull the side together and give the riders some passion but if we ever get to the stage of having a truly competitive team then I do think Phil Morris is the one for the job,

So what do you think the problem would be ? Chapman wouldn't allow them to use the track ? That is the only conceivable problem and even that seems unlikely. Could it be Muddlo just didn't think of anything like that ? One thing we have learned about Muddlo following hi public comments about Darcy's indicretions, and especially since he has been on twitter is that he can't handle any sort of criticism or complaint, talks a good fight but is very slapdash in his approach to many things. When the TM lacks leadership qualities he is not going to get the best out of his riders, hence the poor performance against USA and Latvia.

Unfortunately Torun is not in England so that is not a fair comparison, but a good meeting is a good meeting whatever track it is on. You can't make a sweeping statement that one is better than another. Last August in Heat 15 of the Lakeside -Poole meeting Lakeside needed a 3-3 to take all three points, Ward and Hancock made the gate then Hancock was passed first by Peter Karlsson the inside then by Piotr Swiderski on the outside. Great end to the meeting. I think you could safely say you wouldn't see that happen if Greg made the gate at Torun! There are many, many factors that go to make a good meeting and it is nonsense to make sweeping generalisations. They all have exciting and boring meetings. Amazing how the amateur track curators think that dirt is the answer to everything. If you put dirt down nothing will happen until you put some water with it. Getting the right amount in the right weather conditions is not an exact science and takes a lot of experience which even then can be messed up by a change in wind direction or the sun unexpectedly coming out just before the start. The "experts" than turn up and moan that the trackman is useless because there is not enough dirt, but in fact the amount of dirt tends to be pretty much the same week to week, it is the weather that changes Oh dear, sounds like Gavan touched a raw nerve

Good points. It reminds me of an old saying in road racing that applies equally in speedway, which is that good riders are fast riders who have discovered that the ground is hard and slow down a bit. To my mind Tai , in 2012 managed to tread the very fine line between going fast enough without over-cooking it. Darcy hasn't yet fully got used to the idea that the throttle works both ways although nobody would deny he is one of the most gifted riders ever to sit on a speedway bike, but at the very top level it does seem he needs to refine his undoubted talent a little Interestingly (and as far as I can work out) Tai is one of only 7 riders to have won the WC at his age or younger. Of those seven only Peter Collins and Michael Lee failed to go on to at least one other title. Collins was never quite the same after his bad leg injury the year following his title win and we all know how Lee threw his career away. Statistically there is no reason why both Tai and Darcy shouldn't collect multiple titles if they stay reasonably fit. Incidentally, Tai reminds me of Peter Karlsson in many ways. People talk bout Tai being a good gater but I seem to have seen him in a number of GP's where he has missed the gate then hung back , looked for the gaps, picked his line, found the grip and gone from last to first or second coming off the second bend. That is exactly what PK does and I think it takes a particular talent that not everybody has. At first I thought Tai was just lucky but it seems to happen too often to be just luck May be its coincidence but maybe Tai has learned something from the master.craftsman

It just gets better and better

Another Starman classic ! If they are not under starters orders and the green light is not on the tapes won't be going up anyway

You asked what professional sport allows its sportsmen to compete in different leagues and I told you. If you are now widening it out to talk about several leagues throughout the world then it has be said that speedway is in a unique position because it is probably the only sport where this is physically possible. If you are saying that we would be better off and attendances would be better if riders like Darcy Ward and Tai Woffinden stuck to Poland then you really have taken leave of your senses. Its an academic point anyway because even if the Worlds best were riding in the EL you still wouldn't go and would still ,be sitting on the sidelines moaning about the first thing that comes into your head. I really don't know what your problem is, unless you need to get a life, but if you don't like the modern sport that much spare us the "you've all got your heads in the sand routine" and go off and find something you do like. Its that simple.

Cricket. Next Question..........(try to make it a sensible one)

So Muddlo is not TM anymore then ?

I would just like to see one more cracking maximum from Peter Karlsson before he finally hangs up his Kevlars, and to see Ricky Ashworth fully recovered.

The fact that attendances have dropped off is beyond dispute. It is easy to suggest this or that reason for the decline but unravelling the exact cause is more complex and more difficult. There are many factors that affect attendances. For example why is it that Peterborough with a good race track and decent world class riders, that are exciting to watch on their home track could not get their average crowd above 700 (according to Rick Frost) while Poole's lowest crowd of the season was higher than the Panthers average ? It is certainly good enough to encourage some ardent fans (such as Blupanther) to make a very long round trip to EOES on a regular basis. Could the answer be that due to a changing population people in the Peterborough area are simply not minded to support that type of sport however exciting it is made ? Birmingham with a winning team has really struggled with crowds whist Wolves, just up the road seem to have balanced the books despite more adversity and less success while competing in exactly the same league. At Lakeside this year the crowds were very poor in the early part of the season then from mid-June they suddenly picked up, and according to the promotion the crowd figures in July and August were comparable to some of the best crowds prior to the recession and the meeting on 23rd of August was the best week-night crowd the present promotion have had, bettered only by Bank-Holiday and Saturday meetings. What caused this sudden improvement ? It was simply that in this part of the country we ran into the best summer for some years and speedway is a great place to be on a warm evening. All these things have to be factored into attendances. I know the weather has always been erratic in this country but undoubtedly peoples tolerance of such things in this day and age is less than it was 20 or 30 years ago. The other thing that has to be factored in is peoples changing entertainment habits. Grass track racing is really struggling, even more than speedway, moto-cross is just about treading water, stock car racing is only viable at many venues because of a few big meetings a year but with relatively poor crowds at many smaller meetings. Greyhound racing has virtually disappeared from London, and everywhere you go pubs which are closing at the rate of about 30 per week are being turned into McDonalds or Tesco Express. Traditional High Street shops are closing all over the place. They question that the critics of modern speedway never want to answer is this: Does the fact that all these other enterprises are struggling or closing down indicate that they are also being run incompetently and don't know what their customers want or is it just possible that in the modern world peoples tastes are changing. ? Clearly the GP system is having a detrimental effect on the domestic fixtures but we can't do much about that, although the present changes may help to become less dependent on foreign riders. That is a fact of life we have to deal with. we can't ban the televising of continental meetings. Weather the televising of domestic meetings spoils the sport is a matter of conjecture. Obviously it hits the crowd of any particular meeting but I doubt whether any one not involved with the cost/benefit ratio is qualified to judge, especially when you take into account the beneficial aspect of attracting sponsors. So in summary its all very well to shoot from the hip and highlight various problems which we all know exist but unless you look at the wider picture and try to separate the various factors its very difficult to point to any single cause such as the play-offs, and say if we got rid of this or that everything in the garden would be rosy.

Posts are to be judged not only in the spirit in which they are written but also in the spirit in which they are read. Since post 153 HA's posts have collected a total of eleven "likes" so clearly a number of people have understood the general thrust of the points he was making, and he managed to make his points without aiming personal insults at another poster. On the other hand the number of "likes" your posts have collected in response to HA is..er.. ..none, although someone has had to ask what you are talking about. . Possibly the fault lies with the spin you are choosing to put on the posts rather than the broad point the poster was trying to make.

The era you are talking about, i.e the entertainment tax and crowds of 60,000 is not really the era PC was talking about. For crowds of 60,000 you have to go back to the late 1940's/early 1950's but then what happened ? Within a few years , by the late 1950's the sport had almost died out in this country (far worse than it is today). and was saved not by the worlds best riders (who were already on show), but by the basically amateur Provincial League which brought a regular weekly league programme and a variety of teams. We have been through the T/R and joker argument countless times on this forum and personally I hate the rule but if you abolished it tomorrow you still wouldn't put another few hundred on the average gate of every club nor bring some of them into profit.. Some fans actually like the rule. If that is what it takes to keep TV sponsorship then we have to run with it, that is the unfortunate reality. The main point is that your previous post was based on the statement that the public want to see the worlds best riders but you have provided no evidence that bringing them in would make a significant change to the size of the average gate. We still keep coming back to the fact that we all have our own personal preferences that might possibly add a few here and there or may not but nobody can come up with a viable plan to make a massive difference.

That is a good point Sidney, but something PC never mentioned. I am sure you are old enough to remember the days when riders like Terry Betts would change into their leathers in the car on the way down, arrive a few minutes before the start, get the bike off the car and go straight out on parade. I am not saying it should be last-minute stuff like that today but it always amazes me how riders can be arriving from around 5 pm onwards and by 7-30 or 8 pm some of them are still not ready to go out on parade.

........but a lot of them are not prepared to pay for it. Therein lies a large part of the problem. The forum is full of people who say £17 is too much to pay. In a difficult economic climate it is understandable that many can't afford it. Those are the ones that expect to see world class riders being paid peanuts. There is also a fair body of opinion that says they prefer NL or PL meetings because in their opinion the racing is better, so world class riders are not a draw as far as they are concerned. Do the sums. After you deduct VAT the promoter is left with a little over £14 from the original £17. By the time you allow for concessions and season tickets the admission per punter averages out at around £13 per head. Now, instead of making bald statements about what you think would happen, tell us how much it would cost to attract the "worlds best riders" (those are your words not mine) and how many extra punters it would take through the gate to balance the books, taking into account rain-offs and cold wet evenings where a lot are put off by the weather, but stadium rents etc still have to be paid. This is part of the problem. People have these grand ideas about getting big crowds back but nobody is prepared to put pen to paper and work out what it would all cost. Have you any idea at all what it would cost to get the worlds best e.g. Greg, Emil, Nicki etc to commit to a full season over here.? I doubt it. The bottom;line is that you can you can't please everyone, and speedway now probably has more diverse opinions among the fans than almost any other sport. Of course seeing the worlds best for £10 admission is a great idea, but whether it would pay is a totally different matter.

I agree Ivan had more than his share of rollers and I didn't like him for that reason. The point is though, should the World Championship be decided on that sort of unsatisfactory start ? In the context of the discussion we are having my point is that the GP system does away with a rider becoming World Champion by a bit of luck or cheating on the day. I understand the arguments about selection and qualification but nobody can say that Tai won his title on the basis of luck or gate positions. These things even themselves out over a GP series.

I don't want to wander too far off topic but that comment shows how the discussion is entering the realms of fantasy. So Szczakiel's performance wasn't a one -off? Can you just remind us of his consistently world class performances outside of Poland ? Apart from his 0 points in the '71 Final that is. I can't find any reference to him in any other World Finals, unless he paid to get in.. And what did he score in the Daily Mirror World Series two moths before the winning the World Final ? Zero I believe. He then rode at Wembley in the WTC a couple of weeks after becoming world champion and managed another world class 0.. Hardly puts him among the all time greats but more importantly suggests his WC win was a bit of a one off performance. His infamous run off with Mauger for the title is on youtube. Look at it carefully http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQplGWLW7Zw Was the Pole allowed to get a roller or whatt ? The rules require the riders to have an equal start. Is right that in a run-off to decide the Speedway Championship of the World this sort of roller should be allowed ? Look at the start marshal. He stands still and doesn't even raise his arms to signify the riders are under starters orders, Szczakiel rolls and the ref lets the tapes go. Look at Maugers throttle hand. The riders are supposed to be allowed 1.5 seconds between coming under starters orders and the tapes going up, to allow them to get their engines spinning. Mauger is only just opening his throttle as he sees Szczakiel starting to roll. Clearly there was no proper signal to put the riders under starters orders. The whole attitude of the referee is shown after Mauger crashes. He is lying unconscious on the track being attended by a doctor, For all anyone knew at that stage Maugers life could have hung in the balance yet the referee allows the "race" to continue. Szczakiel then demonstrates his arrogance by coming round on the next lap, on seeing the unconscious Mauger and the medics on the track , instead of shutting off he deliberately rides wide to within a couple of feet of Mauger and showers both him and the medics with shale. Disgraceful behaviour Earlier in the meeting even Dave Lanning had commented that the Polish authorities were making up the rules as they went along. Putting all these facts together there is no doubt in my mind that the whole thing was a stitch up. The Poles were desperate to have a world champion and Szczakiel knew the ref was going to let the tapes go when he rolled.. To my mind this was the event that makes the case for the GP system. We had some good one-off finals after that but it was increasingly a game of chance.

Absolutely spot on.

That post is a classic example of the narrow minded view that seems to prevail amongst certain blinkered fans. Personally I don't like the double points rule, in fact I loath it and have said so many times on here. Nobody would be happier than me to see the back of it. But the plain fact is that various fans have come on here and said they like it and it should stay, so who am I or you, to say our opinion is better than theirs and they are wrong. They are still fans with their opinions. Bottom line is, it won't stop me going to speedway. You are right, the sport has been in a healthier state, but PC has apparently not suggested any new ideas, just going back to the old ones.

I don't know if you have read the whole thread but nobody has said he doesn't have something to offer. This is what SCB posted yesterday;- "Nobody has said he should have no opinion. everyone is entitled to an opinion. But just because he could ride a speedway bike better than most 30-odd years ago doesn't mean he knows how to make the sport a success now " He has an opinion but the trouble is some on here think it is think it is the only opinion worth listening to. .

The point was running a speedway club in the modern world. Not sure why PC's opinion should be revered any more than Chris Morton's or Chris Louis who have to find a way of making the books balance in the speedway world of 2014, or for that matter ex-riders like Rosco or Muddlo. who still have a day-to-day hands on role. All PC has done is to articulate the views of certain fans, but that still doesn't make those views more valid than those who disagree. You can bet your life SS won't provide any balance by publishing an interview with a senior figure in the sport with an opposing view, or an explanation of why things are as they are. Just to take up the point about riders being called back ,for example, yes, it is frustrating for the fans when a start gets called back but the real reason is that riders all too often DO jump the start and if they were too stay still the majority of false starts wouldn't happen. The trouble is certain fans think they have a better view of who is rolling and who isn't from 50 or 100 metres away than from the refs box which is usually the best view in the stadium, and this are the same ones that only want top see one side of the problem. I would love to see an interview with someone like Mick Bates, an ex-rider now a ref giving his thoughts on the subject, but of course SS would never publish anything like that because their readership now seems to consist almost entirely of the "bring back the old days brigade" who are only interested in one side of the argument.

I agree with that. It would have been more informative if SS had published an interview with someone like Chris Morton or John and Chris Louis.. They have ridden at the top level and have also seen at first hand the problems of running a speedway club in the modern world.

If I am reading his post #350 correctly it seems he does indeed spend his time looking at stuffed birds, on fast broadband apparently

You just reminded me of one of Mark Twain's satirical comments--" Why are people happy at a birth and sad at a funeral ?........Because they are not the person involved" (its called black humour). Made me laugh anyway.

I understand the point you make which was fair enough back in the days of straight win or lose when a team only had to win get 7points up in real terms on the final scoresheet in order to defeat 2 successful tacticals but now we have a scoring system which to my mind is excellent in giving a gallant loser something from the match. You haven't commented on that aspect but surely giving two bites of the cherry as we now do (through tacticals and league points) is giving a failing team too much ? And does an 8-1 really galvanise a team more than a 5-1 ? If a team is 10 points down and get a 5-1 they only have to share the remaining heats to get something out of the match. If that doesn't galvanise them they don't deserve anything IMO. Above all having t/r's in a two leg match really does seem to be a ridiculous extreme to me, and surely reduces it to a lottery?