Noelinho

It’s a dead rubber hundreds of miles from home. The only thing I care about is none of the Glasgow riders pick up an injury or a bike issue.

Oh, sorry. I thought you mean for the playoff tie. Couldn’t care less who we field at Plymouth to be honest. 7 guests and Middleditch as TM would suit me fine.

That’s not going to happen!

Ah, i forgot about that, you’re quite right. So it seems if we don’t manage today, the next available day would be Saturday. I can’t imagine they want that. So realistically, it would be a week on Tuesday as the next possible date.

If there is a rain off, it would normally be re-arranged for Friday, but the current forecast for Friday is bad. Given the Poole leg takes Wednesday out, Thursday has the best forecast. It’s a very unusual day for us to use (it’s usually Friday, then Sunday, then maybe Wednesday?), but I don’t know what the biggest limiting factor is for us. Obviously there’s Premiership playoffs during the week too, which might present complications.

The Ben Fund has to be today - there are no other fixtures, unless we get through to the final, or there’s something else arranged that hasn’t been announced (I’d like to see us arrange a two-legged tie with Edinburgh, given the circumstances, but I doubt it’ll happen). Current forecast is 0.3mm of rain per hour from 6pm, which is less than was forecast. That wouldn’t be an issue in summer but will cause more problems today. I think the track should be OK, but it’ll be tricky for the riders. It significantly reduces the home track advantage as it’ll be very different to what we have been riding on for months.

I’d happily go along, pay and support the promotion if they do that, but it does seem very unlikely. It’s just too far to get enough fans to travel regularly, before you take anything else into account.

Especially as it’s colder now. As soon as that track gets wet, it’s staying wet.

The people's champions

I suspect the weekend family business is a more sustainable way of paying his bills. Think they said he was on holiday for the Plymouth match. Fair play - nothing wrong with not constantly bending over backwards at the expense of your family.

I’m glad I didn’t bother to go. The only thing worse than freezing your arse off at Armadale is freezing your arse off whilst the home team get mauled the one time you’d be OK with them doing well.

That was epic team riding around turn 1 in the re-run of heat 8 there.

I seem to remember Starke being decent at Ashfield earlier in the season. I don't think he's a big risk at 2.

Ulle and Danyon are both out, per Michael Max.

Three from each team progress, along with Chris Harris.

Not sure you should fear the home leg. If Sam and Josh do their thing you're over halfway there. Lasse's looked better and better when I've seen him.

I don’t think it was a serious suggestion!

Hard to see past Dan at the moment, but very happy to see Cookie showing well.

Hadn’t seen that. The Tigers’ website hasn’t been updated yet. But it does make sense that BSN can’t show meetings at the same time.

I actually quite like Kelvin’s commentary during the races, but he struggles between the races. He’s not a natural filler. I know we have Kiri today, but I’m always amazed they don’t use Abi more when she’s presenting. She’s a fantastic filler and I feel like she’s under-utilised. Kelvin’s great, but pushing the conversation isn’t really his natural habitat.

I'd quite like to avoid the first leg this Friday, purely to go along and see the Leicester/Edinburgh semi-final at Armadale.

Yeah, difficult to see Glasgow winning the tie. Cook will be back - he’s racing at BV tomorrow. Hume unlikely from what others have said. Ulle might be back, but he’ll probably be more useful at Poole than at home, based on his form this year. You have to think Connor will be race rusty too.

I don’t want to spoil the party, but isn’t Zmarzlik only guaranteed a 19 point lead at this point? Edit: I thought he started with an 18 point lead. My bad.

There was no contact - Josh said that himself. He was mightily pumped up for the heat and I think it was just the adrenaline. He felt he wasn't left enough room, I think it was OK and he just got a bit too much grip. The exclusion of Lasse in heat 11 was completely wrong though. Edinburgh have been pretty good. Sam and Josh both riding as well as you'd expect, great contributions from Lasse and Kye as well.

Absolutely phenomenal heat 4 there. I knew Pickering was either going to win or put it in the fence…