Steve Shovlar

Cracking prize lads. Best of luck everyone!!

Having now had the chance to watch the meeting, first of all i would like to pass my good wishes on a speedy recovery to Freddie Lindgre and Andreas Jonsson. I was gob smacked when Zagar was excluded for the incident with Saifudinov. Ref really got this wrong. Think it was a case of " we can't exclude the GP leader". Bad, bad call and Zagar was very hard done by. Glad he made it to the final as he desereved it. Now everyone can see the reason why Darcy is so highly rated. A shame he was injured because I am sure he would have been challenging for the World Crown this season. Easily the best rider on show last night. No wonder Matt wants him straight back in the Poole team and has had to chop out a brand new rider who has done nothing wrong at all. Darcy puts bums on seats, simple as that. You can guarentee an extra few people through the turnstiles at Brandon next Friday because he is riding. The Eurosport commentator needs to go. No knowledge and tries to blag it. While he would get away with it with newcomers to the sport, many fans are extremely knowledgeable and he comes accross as a no nothing. Either get someone in who does know the sport, or just go straight back to Kelvin and his mate. Good GP overall. Roll on the SWC.

Hearing on Five Live that Sport England might not give the millions of pounds a year to the Lawn Tennis Association as they are not clear on how the money will be spent. urely speedway could benefit from some of these handouts to train British youngsters. Is anyone applying to Sports England for some of this lottery dosh? If the rich kids and snobs of tennis can get some of the loot, surely a working class sport like speedway can get some cash to get a few oiks off the street and into sport? Thoughts?

The main problem with Tai is that he doesn't endear himself to sponsors as he looks such a mess with big pierced ears and huge ugly tatooes plastered over his neck and body. Not something many companies would like to be associated with. Having said that, he is riding great so well done to him. he comes accross as a sensible young man. Such a shame about what he has done to himself.

Of course it isn't. That might be the price you would like to pay but overheads and costs make it a much more expensive sport.

Best meeting on sky for a long while. Great stuff well done to all riders.

Bought my ticket from a tout on Saturday. Paid 22.50 (45 for two) and had the best seats in the house. (M8, middle tier, second row, mixing it with Briggo, PC, Les Collins, etc) Why buy now when bargains are to be had an hour before tapes up?

Just got back. An enjoyable day. Met the usual crowd I battle with on here. Much bigger crowd than I expected. Holding up very well though the top tier and cheaper ticket option is proving more popular than spending £60+ on a ticket! Track wise it was poor with no dirt but they did manage to keep it stuck together for the meeting to go ahead. Rollers packing it down every 4 heats. KK unlucky as he looked to have it sewn up and we knew Emil would probably do it at the second bite. Bad luck for Tai with his team mate causing the crash. Hope he is not out for long. Holder looking much better tonight but I feel picked the wrong gate in the semi. BSI got out of jail tonight and I hope they are more on the ball for next year. We don't want a repeat of tonights track.

Excellent win by the Braussie. Come of age this season.

Enjoyable meeting. Ref a disgrace excluding Dyer.in heat 15.

What on earth have I got to do with it? I am an antique dealer.

Now up after a late night. Was it worth watching it live? I guess so but not a great start to the series. As Pete said the Hancock piece was good to watch in the interval. Racing wise pretty bad. As bad as a Czech GP. Things can only get better. Thought the commentary was good though I do prefer the British team better. Who did the pickup commentary? He seems to know what he was talking about. Glad no more back to the studio. Much better to stay at the track. Having just moved and no Sky fitted yet, I watched via the Eurosport Player on my laptop, pugged into my TV via hdmi. Very good picture on a 40 inch screen with no buffering on a 1.9MB Wi-Fi. Far better image than a free stream sourced online and as good as a SD image on TV. Paid £4.99 for a month with no subscription as Sky is being fitted next week. Well worth it for those without Sky.

Not a great GP at all. Only decent race was heat 20. Gollob gifted Hampel the win by picking gate 2. Madness. Ward looked good but messed up the semi off the gate. Gate 4 a joke all meeting. About 2 wins in 23 races. Not a great crowd either. Looked smaller than last year.Next year the last down under?

Repeated tonight at 8. Worth watching the show anyway but the advert breaks seem longer than the show! Repeated tonight at 8. Worth watching the show anyway but the advert breaks seem longer than the show!

Poole 1-2 IMO. Either could win it.

What on earth are you on about? I have an antique shop and run an auction house.

Deplete the earnings of proper speedway promoters and wreck the league as we know it. This is a dead idea which will get no further than this thread. Time to move on. Nothing to see here.

This "group" couldn't come along and deal with just the gRA at Poole to use the track, as the contract for speedway is with Matt Ford. Even if a deal was made, the shale on the track would belong to Matt Ford who could stop this group from using it. The whole thing is dead in the water and hardly worth a debate now. These people went about it all wrong and have blown any chance they "might" have had. Its just like John Leslie has said above.

What other sports have sole rights? Just about every pro sport in the UK. As Orion said the other day, see what would happen if you tried to hire Rooney, Bale, Gerrald etc and have a Team GB V Brazil at Reading. You wouldn't get very far. No different to what this bunch are attempting, and rightly knocked back.

You have sole rights to a sport in the UK. Your members have spent tens of thousands building tracks, which cost thousands to maintain and pay rent and insurance. Your members pay riders every week during the season. Then Fred Blogs comes along, asks some of your riders to ride for him, on your track, taking gate money away from you! No different from me going to Matt Ford. Asking to use Wimborne Road on a Monday. And asking the Poole team to ride for me against a world select. What do you think Matt would tell me to do? I reckon a short pier would be in his reply. This bunch are basically trying to leech of the current setup. Why don't they go build their own stadium and run some of their own meetings (obviously without speedway bikes as that also wouldn't be allowed) and then there would be no problem. Alternatively they could ask to join the bspa and bring their ideas to the table As it stands now they are trying to act like parasites on our sport

So good they didn't do a little research into who can run speedway in the UK.

Christ there's a lot of nonsense and naive posts on this thread. Orion has summed it up perfectly already. Some two bit organisation comes along and wants to run some speedway meetings. They don't even have the savvy to do a minimum amount of research to realise this is not going to happen. A load of guys quizzing around on their mx bikes is one thing. However some on here like to moan, speedway is a professional sport in the UK and is run just like football, albeit on a much smaller scale. I couldn't come along and organise a football series of Team Gb v Brazil, hire a stadium and make a killing by putting out Rooney, Bale etc. the FA would not allow it, and neither would the SCB. If these guys want to run an event using motor cross riders on motor cross bikes, they "might" have stood a slight chance of hiring a track. Though I doubt they would get peission to do even that. I'll though out concept by a bunch of amateurs.

Who would film UK EL speedway if Sky pulled out allowing Eurosport to take it? Eurosport would need a feed to take and show. Doubt it wouold happen.

Eurosport take feeds, they don't film events themselves. So at best it is likely to be like the dreadful coverage of the Swedish League on Premier Sports. One camera and a bloke in a booth at a studio somewhere, with long periods where the single camera points at the track. It would be awful

Great news being at Poole. Superb race track which is fair to all and guarenteed a massive sell out crowd. In the diary already. Well done to all who made sure it came to a proper fair race track.