SCB

Hes got an EL average and his PL average is too old.

My God. That was rubbish.

Just checked and yes, it seems you can buy a £25 ticket. Don't know why I thought £37 was cheapest and the £25 tickets could only be bought as add-ons to the family ticket.

In some ways I agree. But I look at some fo the crap that qualifies over the years and compare it to the wildcards, and suddenly..... without wildcards Nicki is only a double World Champion and Tai is still waiting. Yet I don't think a single World Champion come from the previous years GP qualifier.

What other motorsport World Championship has an open qualification system (albeit it with only 11 spaces)? Most are just the man (or woman) who pays the most or whos team pays the most.

You are clearly KKS

Isn't it £37 for a cheap Cardiff ticket?

Fair enough. And in the future, when British speedway is hopefully booming the the likes of Hancock, Laguta (x2), Woffy, Pawlicki (x2) and Emil all want in, then we can raise the limit. But for now, it needs to be cautious. As it was, this years limit was slightly above break even and probably not far short of the best team from last year anyway.

It is huge. At present the lowest average 1-5 rider has a 4.5 average. So if you have to find 3 points worth of rider, you're looking for a 7.5 rider - and they don't exist, if they did, Leicester or Swindon would have them now. As no doubt would Wolves. Make the points limit too high and it does far more harm than making it too low.

It fell apart in 2003 when Kings Lynn took Shane Parker and Tom P Madsen, a pair of EL riders and got them to double down. What then started to happen is EL riders started to double up, ride on the way down in their career. Rather than riders trying to move up - it actually become an easy way to drop down rather than the opposite.

People will tell you that doubling up is due to a lack of riders. Thats crap. 15 years ago you had EL, PL and NL with the only doubling up being between PL and NL and then only a rider or maybe 2 per team and they did it for a season. Fast forward to today and we have 2 or 3 riders in every team doubling up "due to a lack of riders" such a lack of riders that we have had to come up with the MDL/NDL to handle all the riders! 15 years ago the top 10-15 PL riders would all be full time EL riders now and there spaces in the PL would be have been taken by the top 10 NL riders and there spaces in the NL would have been taken by those in the MDL/NDL. 15 years ago any PL rider who could average 5.00 in the EL was seen as a big thing, now they can all get 6.5 (helped to some extent by the format I'll admit) - go back to the old days. Get rid of doubling up and what you'll see is riders going EL and their place taken by NL riders. This will cut costs, it will see more young Brits given a chance and it will make the move from junior to EL star a more smooth transition. Doubling up should be British riders under 25 (or less than 3 seasons in the league below) and for 1 season.

What is it with clubs being so desperate to announce end of season dos in July? Or May in the case of Lakeside

He's a terrible manager. But we seem to have decided on this thread the only thing the Team GB manager has to do is employ British riders.

And give the job to Havvy? The only EL manager who is embracing British riders?

The median is where you line up all numbers in order and take the middle value. You need an odd number of values to get a real median. If you had numbers 7, 1 and 19, the median is 7 as it's the middle of the 3 numbers. But the mean would be the sum of all 3 divided by 3 - 9 in my example.

It means he can't ride as a guest in the PL where no facility is allowed s already pointed out. There's nothing in the rules that says a NL rider can guest in the PL in any other way though. I'd argue that Adam is allowed to guest in the PL as an EL guest though.

AFAIK, there is no such rule. Bates is an excellent signing that seems to meet all the criteria. For all Drurys faults, he never slow in make a team change be it to replace a struggling rider or to replace someone who is injured.

You're stuck with guests for Stead because you can't get an ex-EL rider as none of them will convert to high enough an average to be better than the gusts you have available due to the 6 point EL rule so it rules out the likes of Sundstrom and Larsen (pre-injury) and I can only think of 1 10 point ex-PL rider who might still have his average and be eligible but it depends on the wording of the rule - Jason Doyle - and thats not going to happen these days.

Except the rules don't allow that. AFAIK NL riders cannot actually guest. If they're giving him a 5 point PL average, he cannot be a "NL Guest".

It's not that simple sadly. Drop prices by 33% and you need to increase your crowd by the same to make up for it. Will that happen? It's a brave promoter who trys it.

You have 13.5 to replace the pair of them. Far better to look for a 5.5 rider for Birks and stick with guests. Whats Tero Aarnio like at Sheffield? Or Mathieu Tresarrieu?

Technically, you could get very close to that 39 point team being the better team of the two in theory! But only with bonus points and a heat 15. 3-3 in every race where one team is always first and last, there top two go into heat 15 on maximums but one of them drops a points, they score 46 but have a combined team average of 40.2. But the other team scores 44 +14 bonus points and average 53.6 Don't you just love averages!

It's probably been agreed. It's the BSPA I'm laughing it. Say he should be a 5, despite the fact the ruels say any NL rider is a 3. Then allow him to guest - all very odd!

I thought Brad Wilson-Dean was a 5? Meaning he's not allowed to guest in the PL. #RubberRules

Something that is an issue is that the gap between the EL and PL has got closer in the last 15 years while the gap between the PL and the CL/NL has grown. That has meant more expensive top end riders but also made it harder for lower order riders to break into the PL. This is surely in part due to doubling up meaning the only reasons riders leave the PL is when they retire, the top guys can stay there and continue with the EL. In the past they'd have had to have made a choice and a few of them would have stuck with the EL.