The Cheese

Interesting that the British Speedway website has posted pictures and the video of it. Usually they just give it a brief mention in the report and move on. If that's a deliberate choice to try and publicise these incidents more then I think it's a good decision.

https://britishspeedway.co.uk/rowe-motor-oil-premiership/northampton-update-opening-home-meeting/ NORTHAMPTON Speedway can confirm tickets for their eagerly awaited opening home meeting are expected to go on sale next Tuesday evening at the earliest (April 28). The Foxes race for the first time at Northampton International Raceway on Thursday April 30 when they take on Ipswich in the Premiership Knockout Cup. The decision to delay ticket sales until 48 hours before the event has been taken because the club’s Speedway Control Bureau (SCB) track inspection is scheduled to take place next Tuesday. The venue must satisfy the requirements of this inspection, including a track test with four riders completing racing laps, in order to be signed off to stage a meeting. Since the announcement last month that speedway would be coming to Northampton this season, exceptional efforts have been made to complete the work required for the stadium to become dual-purpose, running speedway as well as its existing stock car use. This includes work on the stadium infrastructure, electrical upgrades and additional safety measures specific to speedway, and the track work itself is now complete. However, launching a new speedway venue in a very limited timeframe does bring its challenges, and there have also been unavoidable delays with the manufacture and delivery of other safety barriers essential to the running of speedway. This explains why the SCB inspection is scheduled for the week of the opening meeting, when the original anticipated timeline was for it to take place this week. We are very optimistic that we will be able to satisfy the SCB’s requirements by Tuesday; however, we feel it is prudent to not put tickets on sale until after we have received the green light, and we hope supporters will appreciate this move. We will communicate the outcome of the inspection as soon as possible, with an expectation that tickets will be on sale by Tuesday evening should we receive a positive verdict.

They'll need someone else for the World Cup/SoN so maybe he'll do those.

Typical short-sighted view. County cricket continue to stream every game for free on YouTube, last week's first round of the season getting just under 1.4 million views across the four days. Speedway is similar in terms of having regular natural breaks in play, it would be a perfect opportunity to sell sponsorship for between races.

Amazingly, Harris only guested once last season and that came on the 25th September. He's got some catching up to do this year!

Not even that, it was about 2 miles away. There's a holiday park within 15-20 minutes walking distance as well.

I see there's a Stock Car meeting taking place there on Saturday. Surely some details will be revealed before then so they can take the opportunity to promote it? 🤔

After a disappointing finish in today's Gold Cup, maybe Harry's horse 'The Jukebox Man' could be Northampton's new number 1.

Good news. Hopefully they can promote it well and build up a solid fanbase.

We must surely be approaching the point where they say it's too late to get this done. This waiting isn't fair on the riders, it's not fair on the other clubs who have declared they're running but can't get properly organised, and most importantly it's not fair to the supporters who can't be blamed if they decide that after the farce of this winter it's finally the time to walk away from the sport. I hope Northampton do start. The circumstances in which it happens isn't ideal but it would still be exciting to see a new track enter, and wouldn't it be great if we were all here in 7-8 months time looking back at a successful first season. But you can't keep everyone waiting around forever, there has to be a deadline.

Simon Stead has stepped down as joint-manager of Team GB to spend more time with his family.

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I genuinely had no idea who she was before reading this thread so can't comment on that side except that it would be interesting to know how they came to the decision to choose her for it. It just looks so amateur though. Cameo is to wish people happy birthday or see who's dumb enough to say hello to Mike Hunt, not for what should be a serious competition in a professional sport. You even have the final two sides picked out at the same time! Getting 'a name' to do the draw is a solid idea but surely there were better ways of going about it. As an example TNT commentator Darren Fletcher has some history with the sport, could he have been asked and maybe got someone like Ally McCoist to help out, if I remember correctly he's mentioned Glasgow on his radio show in the last year or so.

If you're changing to one league then that has to be prepared for well before the end of the previous season so at this stage there's no real alternative. Only 5 teams is clearly not good but it was obvious to everyone that the problem was coming so they only have themselves to blame. They just need to somehow get through this year now whilst getting a proper plan in place for 2027 and hope that it's not too late. They've missed several opportunities for a reset and they won't keep coming, time will run out eventually. Planning for a KO Cup with 5 sides doesn't give any confidence they're capable of it though, at the very least you would think they could come up with a fresh idea to replace that.

Can't blame any rider for not hanging around waiting, it was inevitable really that they would start to look elsewhere rather than wait until January for any guarantee. Hopefully not the last we've seen of Doyle over here, but if it is then thanks for the 20 years or so he's given to the sport in this country.

It's fairly obvious that if you go to one league now then essentially all signings made so far are void. There are a few others along with Pickering who you would expect to prioritise a current Premiership side and no doubt several more amongst those agreed but not announced. And for all the criticism of the Premiership being selfish etc, it's clear that the bulk of the Championship will have no intention of allowing those five clubs in for that reason.

Disappointing news. I thought Louis was one of the few promoters that had the ability and professionalism to help dig the sport out of this mess. Big loss to British speedway as well as Ipswich.

Exactly that. All this 'your league' stuff is the reason there will never be any progress. You can't have the two competing against each other, if they can't work together then they're all doomed.

Rather than asking what is there to gain for clubs attending this, maybe they should be asking what is there to lose? At the very least you would think that the costs should pretty much be covered by sales of merchandise. Hand out some free/discounted tickets for next season. Your track might be miles away but we're heading into the time of year where people will be travelling to see family, maybe they have relatives close by who haven't attended before. They might have a friend at work who holidays in that area every summer. And who knows, maybe there's a potential sponsor there or someone who could introduce you to one?

Might work for anyone interested in trying to cop off with a senior citizen.

If they want someone with links to Sky then they've probably got the wrong Redknapp involved.

Betting on points scored by a rider is there now so in theory you could already have fixing. Realistically it's probably such a small market that anything looking even slightly dodgy would be flagged immediately.

Premier Sports have an estimated 300k subscribers, can't see that helping to grow the sport. Sky by comparison had 6m from the last figures I can find, and 26.7m people watched content across all their platforms in the last year. One of the worst things about TNT's coverage is that a big deal was made about it including the free-to-air highlights, only for them to be shown once a week at 2am or something ridiculous. I doubt that it attracted even a single new fan.

I can agree with that, it's a far bigger issue than doubling-up. R/R should be mandatory if one rider in the top 5 is missing for a start. In the top league it should be easy enough to replace a reserve with someone who only has a Championship spot or even unattached which would be a good opportunity to put themselves in the shop window. The term 'guest' should be dropped in that scenario as well. Something like 'injury loan' or 'emergency loan' sounds better.