Noelinho

The promotion have decided to make call-offs very early for a few years now. It's not a new thing. Home fans have on the whole been very supportive of this, and that's their main source of income. It might be different to how others do it, but it does seem to work well up here.

Because the promotion have been burned a few times by bad weather that was worse than expected, and a repeat of Berwick only three weeks later would be pretty awkward.

Yes, I think the Championship subscription includes the BSN Semi Finals.

My estimation is about 500 people on the average race night, yes. But that's a very unscientific manual head count, not from anywhere official, so I could be wrong. To me it definitely feels the crowd is smaller than back in 2018/19. And as I've said before, for all the great stuff they do, I don't feel like the promotion are very good at promoting the product. We're spoiled rotten by the racing at Ashfield - both the track and the riders - but I do think they really need to get someone in to help them advertise better. It's not that they don't do anything, it just seems to lack consistency.

Well Eurosport put cameras on bikes last year, so may as well stick a mic in the leathers too.

On the Facebook live, they said all the fixtures will be live on BSN. Maybe they'll send Dave Rowe to one, Eurosport style. Just as long as they don't use Sam Ermolenko too!

I suspect they'll use the existing dates this competition and re-organise the league for later. Might help if Glasgow can organise the second leg of the Redcar KO Cup for 26 May too.

Yes, we do seem to get in tight meetings with Scunthorpe, but like I said earlier, I don't really have a big preference.

That Cab Direct sponsorship is working well

You need a longer fishing rod on me!

Does make you wonder though, why didn’t they make it a three-way final?

Yeah, I’d like the teams from the same group to be kept apart. Obviously some people would hate that because they’d think it’s a conspiracy to ensure Glasgow and Poole get to the final! I don’t have a strong preference. Anyone will do. I have a soft spot for Redcar, so wouldn’t mind having them up for an extra match.

Yeah, for all the great stuff the Glasgow promotion do, the actual promotion of the club and its activities has really dropped the last couple of years. They need to get back to it if they want new people coming through the doors.

Yes, but taking out Vissing’s bike troubles, the 15 points was from 6 rides.

Yes, but Vissing had a bike failure and a 2 minute exclusion, so Berwick isn't a fair barometer really.

Home fans don't need to know until later, but isn't it better to call it early for the riders? They might get it wrong, but at least it's decisive.

I don’t think they called it off for fun. The track workers were preparing all week. But they have been bitten hate by more than one cancellation in recent times after the meeting has started and there is a sense they get attacked whatever they do. They got dog’s abuse for the Berwick match, which no one saw coming. They got it in the neck when Leicester were in town, Newcastle the previous year (maybe it was pre-pandemic - I don’t remember now), I think too. Poole in the playoffs was a mess too. None of those issues were caused by the promotion. They get more abuse if they cancel once people turn up, than by cancelling ahead of time, so I can see why they do it. Their priority is always going to be to try not to mess around the home fans, or riders. Any given week, there might be 500 people. Almost all of them most weeks, are there for the Tigers. You can’t please everyone, but if you piss off all the home fans, you can’t make even a vaguely sustainable club.

It was, but not any more in Drumchapel.

It was dry until 18:30. I went for a shower then, and having come out, it's wet everywhere, and I don't mean I forgot to pull the shower curtain in.

I thought it was a light rain off, and given my track record on these things, that usually proves the rain off to be correct!

Gutted Vissing is missing. He’s been a quality watch so far this season. Richard Lawson is always good value though.

Get in the bin!

He was walking at the end of last week's meeting, so I'd guess so. He seemed to get off remarkably lightly in the circumstances.

I did wonder if this might be part of it. I suspect the bike would react much worse to incidental contact with polyfoam than the metal fence - and Harris, Basso and Vissing all regularly scrape it, especially into turn 1.

We’ve had two, and one of them was possibly intentional. I do often wish the polyfoam extended a bit further but I don’t know much about the implications of doing that, or rules. It’s not the most common place for riders to crash at Ashfield, and in the Poland Test match in 2021, one of the visiting riders (Kubera, I think) crashed into the fence in the middle of the back straight. I guess that’s why he told Marcin Nowak the place is dangerous…