SCB

Will make a nice change not squashing 100s of meeting into September and October. Who am I kidding? You know they'll not run a meeting June-August so they can have the annual fixture cram in the winter months!

Without checking, the cut-off is 4.5

Ah thats ok then. The other 2 meetings where riders were missing didn't happen. Peterborough took a bung and weakened their team. They then lost both meetings. Meetings that were winnable. This is illegal as it effects betting. But it's speedway, it does it's own thing.

I know. Heavily limited by a few bookies now after getting 300/1 on Coventry in 2010 and the Torun win I mentioned. Plus I won about 5 grand on one of the earlier GPs last season so that got me limited with another bookie. Not many left now and those that are left on tend to offer odds on televised stuff. But none of that changes the fact that the ACU appear to have said it's OK to offer someone money not to put out their best team. That changes the results of meetings and league tables. That can effect betting. What if, had Peterborough had their full teams out at Scunthorpe and Newcastle they had won the meetings and got 8 league points? They might have mad the play-offs. That means they might have won the league. So in taking a bung to let a rider go elsewhere they have effect the league result which has effected betting. There ARE laws against that and its why the FA had to clamp down on the Sutton goalie for simply eating a pie. In football you get sacked and fined for eating a pie as it effects gambling. In speedway you as good as throw meeting and thus the league and you get a slap on the wrist.

The point is that you can fiddle the results of meetings and in a sport that allows gambling, that is actually against the law. Remember the Sutton United goal keeper who got sacked for eating a pie on TV? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/07/14/former-sutton-united-goalkeeper-wayne-shaw-charged-fa-pie-gate/ OK no bet is ever a certainty but you can certain swing things hugely in your favour. Yet I won just short of 11 grand on the Torun GP in 2016. So it can be done!

I can't bet much with most bookies but there are a few that still let me bet large amounts on TV meetings. If "Joe Bloggs" sign up with the 8 or so bookies that offer betting on speedway and can get 2/1 on the away team winning at Peterborough with all them bookies then it's very much worth doing. TBH, I don't know why Ged doesn't just cut out the middle man and do it himself.

Why not? You'll say rules. I'll say the rules say that Holder had to ride for Peterborough but he still didn't. So why can't AC Milan pay Manchester United a few £££ to take their start players for 3 weekends?

Me placing a HUGE bet on Peterborough to lose a meeting, and then paying Ged Rathbone £28,000 to not let his top rider ride? I make my millions from the bookies, Ged makes his £27,000 (£28,000 minus a £1000 ACU fine) and the other team get a win. We all go home happy (apart from the bookie and nobody likes them) Surely this taking a bung to weaken teams opens up the floodgates to all sorts of betting scandals, potentially.

In what way? A foreign team has paid Peterborough not to "play" their best rider. Peterborough speedway have taken a bung off another club not to field their most competitive team. Or is it OK because it's Torun? But what happens if Peterborough get to the play-offs next year and Glasgow offer them 20k to "rest" someone? Is that OK? Or not?

Break the rules, make a profit from it and your fine will be an irrelevance. What a joke. Hardly a punishment if you gain from the whole situation. It stinks. Riders not turning up is killing the sport, so promoters agreeing to it and taking a bung makes it even worse. Seriously, for a second just think what would happen if AC Milan paid Manchester United not to play Lukaku or Pogba.

So Ive spoken to someone involved in the SWC at a very high level and he informs me that the SWC will NOT have a Czechoslovakia team or any other made up or historic nations.

Glasgows side is much better than Ipswich. 4 heatleader vs 5 for Glasgow and Sarj will be better than Hartel and hes in reserve vs second string. I just dont see what advantage Ipswich have. Ipswich isnt a bad team but Glasgows looks very good to me. Id be amazed if anyone betters it.

Its weird seeing speedway news pop up on my phone from an app! Well Done Glasgow for realising it's not 1989 any more! How long before others follow suit? As for the team, Starke and Vissing are odd signings, I guess the logic is they've been heatleader in recent times so Glasgow now get 5 heat leaders. IMO it's a pretty good team even with those two slightly weird signings and a much better balance than last seasons team. And if you're going to have a sub 3 pointer, IMO they have one of the best. This "bought" team could actually be the one that wins the league!

Id say it shows that a rider scoring 0 form 3 in one of his 11 meetings will heavily drag it down.

They can stick that right up their backside. Speedway is an individual or team sport. Pairs are crap. I look forward to the SWC every season, a pair just won't work. There will be too many heats in the meeting that just don't matter as your country are not riding. Pairs event in speedway are always gimmicks.

Since when was Richie Worrall a sex symbol? HaHaHaHa Someone is taking the piss on the BSPA site right?

If only someone had thought to do that http://speedway-stats.co.uk/

Spot on. The Ipswich announcements tonight on twitter and facebook with the videos were how it should be done.I also really like Ipswichs website. Ipswich like Glasgow are doing the internet well.

This arguement again. And what happens when you want to sign a rider who last year averaged 4.51 and only have 4 points to play with? Under your rules he's now a 5 so doesn't fit. You also have the issue that a rich teams would sign 7 riders who averages x.49 and the poor teams would be left with 7 riders who averages x.51 meaning the rich team will have a team 4.5 point higher. The more decimal places you do averages to, the easier it is to sign replacements in reality, not the other way around. To take your idea to the extreme, lets round all riders to the nearest 6 points, making everyone 0,6 or 12, all riders would fit into one of 3 categories, much easier to sign replacement right?

How do you propose they do that? Travel all over the Midlands asking people?

Same here. I used to love trying to build teams within a limit, work out what changes could be made and also working out riders averages. If people cant do maths thats fine, but stop trying. Thy need to learn that the point limit is NOT connected to the points available in a meeting. Maybe the solution is to not multiple averages by 4 and have a points limit of about 10. People wont get so confused then.

Pull the other one. How much time, effort and money does it take to use social media properly? Glasgow do a great job of it. Its free if you really want it to be all he way up to pay a dedicated person 30k a year. How many clubs interact on twitter? How many clubs set up events for people to be invited to on Facebook? How many have an app that pops up notifications on people phones about news, signings and results? All so easy and can be done very cheap.

I could be wrong but didnt Tony ask for a transfer and Kings Lynn were made to buy him but stopped making the payments after a year because Tony quit riding in the UK before signing for Poole a couple of years later on loan from Ipswich.

Maths is the very core of logic. If you can't do maths then you can't do logic. And these days it seems to be a badge of honour when people can't do maths which is worrying then because it suggests they can't do logic.

He did. But even Matt agrees that it was all bullrubbish, read his quote http://www.skysports.com/speedway/news/12268/10660265/hans-andersen-back-with-poole-pirates-for-2017-season No, he signed a 2 year deal when they moved to the NSS.