Noelinho

Ace doesn't upset other riders as far as I see. Ashton hasn't endeared himself to everyone (although they do seem to have some kind of extra personal beef with each other), so I wouldn't read too much into that, and I'm genuinely not sure why Connor took exception last night. There wasn't a lot in it. Ace isn't the Glasgow rider I'd be worried about upsetting others

I wonder if Edinburgh might try to rearrange their Plymouth fixture for their home match against us, leaving us to race on an off-night for our fixture. It would mess up the BSN semi date if we get there, but I suspect that will happen anyway.

Max squeezez Ace, who in turn squeezed Connor. It was a simple case of not enough room for three. Connor was slightly behind the other two and closest to the fence. He didn’t do much wrong but ran out of room, and by then, the ref couldn’t really put all four back in. Connor wasn’t happy, but Ace was never going to turn the throttle off and let a guy pass him on the outside.

Jim McGregor.

I think we'll hear that from a few people.

Not successfully, no.

I have just checked now. The substances were revealed in the SCB press release after the hearing. Previous press releases didn't specify.

One thought I had is, we could run the rematch as a double header. Glasgow home meeting on the outside track, Edinburgh can use the inside track for their "home" meeting

Yeah, the rain came when I expected it to, but much, much heavier than expected. To be honest, I'm glad Bomber was late. If he hadn't been, I think we'd all be disappointed we'd seen only 10 heats.

When he rode for Glasgow, I lived in the other Tiger city and watched them instead!

The promotions agreed to delay the start. Presumably the Edinburgh promotion didn't want cheap points, and I'm sure we'd agree the same if it were the other way round. I presume the referee (or Edinburgh) said it had to be no more than 15 minutes, which is fair. Glasgow were prepared to put Ace in heat one if it came to it, but I think it was a sensible accomodation.

Good meeting, for the seven heats we had. The call off means I'm getting good value out of the season ticket already too. Starke needs to get his bikes working, Leon needs more speed, the rest looks fine. Sam Hagon a brilliant guest, and I think I've only ever seen Craig Cook win off 15 metres before at Ashfield. Paco looked good in his first ride for once, and I did like seeing Lasse's pass on Leon. I think he's under-rated. Hopefully he stays injury-free this season. Next week will be interesting - could be a few changes to the lineups when we face Berwick.

I was chatting to someone about this earlier, they thought it was only after Richie had said it himself. I'm not 100% although the SCB website will have it all.

Just missing a garbage truck, then it would be complete.

I hope so. It would seem the sensible approach. Possibly a fine to cover hearing costs. I hope it’s no more, because it does sound like a genuine mistake, so it would be a shame if it were punitive.

We aren’t going to. The promotion wants physical punters, and they believe streaming takes away from this. Whether people agree or not, that’s their stance on it.

Nothing announced as yet.

Easy win for Berwick

The “young guy off BSN” was Greg Blair. Didn’t hear the comments about the little fat man, but I was probably annoyed because having waited 30 minutes for my chips, they got cold really quickly and some of them got blown away in the wind!

On the first question, gates open for riders two hours before a meeting. It would be pointless to test them before they go to a meeting (they could just take a banned substance after the test, then go to the meeting!), and that only leaves a small window before the meeting starts. You test them before the meeting rather than after, because it’s a safety issue. This is different than to say, athletics, where safety isn’t such a big concern in, say, the 100m, where you run in your own lane. On the second question, I do agree it seems a bit daft not to test everyone when you’ve bothered to send someone to do the testing (side note: remember, the testing costs more than just the cost of the test itself - you have to account for people and processing). It also gives people the opportunity to argue others might have been caught if only they’d been tested too! In athletics, they usually test the podium positions and then others are random, but that’s because it’s done after the event. I personally don’t have a problem with the way the rules are set up right now. It’s a preventable problem. And even if you could get a different rider in, who would come in on a 3.50 average and do much better than Ace did? The only other solution I can think of that hasn’t been floated is to just not test, but I’m not convinced that’s a great strategy!

The difficulty on the night is who can replace them in time? Connor Bailey was at the track, but his average is too high. On a purely practical level, it's difficult to replace a rider at such short notice, and whilst a number eight is an option, we all know teams won't take one to every meeting because it's another expense. We only used one in the playoffs because they were the playoffs (and we were already running R/R). In normal matches, no teams really going to do that. In terms of re-running a match later, I think fans might find that even worse, if they've paid to see a meeting that then doesn't count. It's a tricky problem to solve when the rider system isn't a squad system. Football teams bring more than 11 players to a match - it makes it much easier. I don't see an easy, cost effective way of doing it in speedway.

I don't know. I didn't see him and I didn't ask. He wasn't on the track walk (but I'm guessing the rules wouldn't allow him to stay in the pits or with the team anyway).

There were a number of stories doing the rounds at the meeting, what you hear just depends on who you talk to. We'll just have to wait and see.

It was fine - much better than people had said to be honest.

I thought we won the league because we snuggled Artem Laguta in with a moustache?