PersonalResponsibility

Pickering has the 2nd leg of the 2. Ekstraliga final this Sunday.

Football is more expensive, but there are a lot more football fans and subsequently more demand in the first place. Even then, I'd argue £30 is on the high side for L1 and I've seen others saying the same. The Stock Car World Championship is an annual event, I don't think you can realistically compare that with a run of the mill league meeting. I personally think the £20-25 range you've listed for standard stock car meetings would be a fair price for Premiership speedway. Closer to £20 for normal league meetings and then bump it up a little when the POs come around. As has been said above though, the price is what people are willing to pay for it. Look at the GP section of this forum, it's full of people decrying the price of tickets for the GP at Belle Vue and yet there was 5,500 people there. Yes, it's only an annual event the same as the Stock Car World Final, but the cheapest ticket was £69 for one meeting and people still paid it.

Any reason why - on the self-titled "VOJENS' WEEKEND OF CHAMPIONS" - we're going to crown the winners of SGP/SGP2/SGP4...but not SGP3 (which was done in Prague instead)?

I agree it's not easy to compete, but that isn't a reason to just not bother either. Worryingly, it comes across as if most involved in the sport share your way of thinking. You've named 2 clubs that BV have to compete against locally, and yet they seem to do a pretty good job. They're one of the biggest/most successful clubs in Britain. If they can manage that with 2 huge football clubs on their doorstep, what's stopping others? Who's competing locally with Kings Lynn, for example? Glasgow are another who have done very well, and another with 2 huge football clubs sharing the city. I assume it's also very difficult and costly to get a ticket to watch any of the clubs mentioned above? Surely that's something we could at least try and exploit? People want to watch live sport, they want entertainment, so why not give them a fast-paced motorsport, plenty of entertainment and all for X% of what it would cost to watch a football match? As I said in my first post though, it's not VFM to watch speedway at 99% of places in this country, so people won't bother.

I get that it's a chicken & egg situation in Britain, but the appearance of the merch available in Poland is usually superior to this country, and doesn't normally start and end with a race shirt and a polo top. I bought some Janowski merch where I last visited Poland, just because it was a decent looking tee that had a cool speedway design on it - I don't think I could name a more boring and forgettable top-level rider than Janowski, but I still bought his merch because it looked decent. It's a completely different animal, yes...but it's the exact same sport. Why is it virtually the national sport? Why is it tribal? Why is merchandising a big business? I don't think Poland has any big secret that they're keeping from us, it's still 4 riders/4 laps/etc/etc. They just do everything better. They don't have PL football to compete with but they still have football clubs who average 10,000+ every match, basketball clubs that average 15,000+, volleyball is very popular, gridiron is popular, etc. It's not as if it's some sporting backwater where the choice is speedway or nothing.

Even more reason to put him in if he's already there. Przyjemski, Blodorn, Bednar are all in their respective SON squads. Neither him nor Ellis will get in the main team anyway, so probably a moot point, but he's a young rider having a good season.

Presumably because their combined age is 75 and they're not better than the top 3. I also think Dan Thompson can count himself unlucky, I'd have had him instead of Ellis personally.

I agree. It's probably a combination, for me at least, of football always being quite a 'premier' event to attend (at least top level football) and speedway slowly creeping up from ~£13 to £27. I think my biggest obstacle is the uncertainty in what you're going to get. If I go to a top-level football game, although I might watch a boring game, it's in a nice stadium, the atmosphere is usually good, and the top players are, in the main, guaranteed to be playing. Similar to a big music gig. If I go to a British speedway meeting I'd get no nice stadium, close to zero atmosphere mostly, and maybe 4/5 top riders across both sides. When you add in that track conditions being bad can wipe out nearly any racing, the venue entertainment is often abysmal, etc. then it just makes you question if £27 is really worth it? My view is probably skewed, though, because I don't have a local track. I think I'd probably (un)happily spend £20 a week if I did, because I'd have a team to support and some skin in the game. As it is, I just pick and choose as a neutral and that's when you realise that it's mostly poor value.

Dear me, I accept that I'm tight and have difficulty parting with my hard earned...but twenty seven English pounds to stand on a terrace and watch a British speedway meeting? Mental.

Will this be the first year in SoN history that the winners score the most points overall?

What sort of thing are you looking to do? Torun is a lovely place but there's not a great deal to do, although you should be fine for a couple of days. It's a nice place for a wander about, some lovely architecture like a lot of places in Poland. If I remember correctly, the prices are about in line with most other speedway places (aside from Warsaw), in that it's cheaper than the UK (where isn't) but not dirt cheap. The tram back and forth to the stadium will be coppers really, there's a stop virtually outside, and you'll certainly not miss the stadium! Enjoy your trip.

It's a long way back for Rybnik now!

It's a terrible position that Gorzow are in, and you have to feel for their fans, but this is some great sh1thousing from Rybnik: https://sportowefakty.wp.pl/zuzel/1207862/zuzel-krzysztof-mrozek-chce-pomoc-stali-gorzow-znowu-zwrocil-sie-do-komarnickieg "I don't want to comment on Stal's financial situation, as it's not my area of expertise, but if there really is a problem, we need to help others. We'll try to make sure Stal only loses two more matches. I'm willing to help,"

Good idea, sadly you just know that whatever was delivered would be shambolic and embarrassing. Cricket is an interesting comparison because they've reinvented their sport as something fast paced, entertaining, and appealing to the younger generation. If only our sport was set up for that sort of crowd, what with 60-second races, music, entertainment opportunities and high speed motorsport....

The U24 league will continue next year, so no flood of free youngsters to fill team spaces. I don't think Poland can be held responsible for this, though, for all they push the envelope at times. The riders know they'll be paid a fortune, and the fortunes are there because Poland get huge crowds, and they get them because they run a professional, attractive product. If you were paying £1000s for someone to ride for your club, then you probably don't want him risking injuries in another country, which is fair enough. I do actually agree with you on giving riders some form of ultimatum, though. In reality, are the likes of Lawson/Howarth/Kemp/etc. really going to ditch British speedway for Poland? It's probably handy now, given Poland is some extra money, but would they sacrifice riding over here for a potential 10-12 meetings a season there? I'm not sure personally. The issue is filling the bottom and middle order riders, probably with NL level riders. Would fans still attend/support in the time it takes to produce new riders to keep teams stocked up?

Why has there been no competition, though? Is it because Bartosz is just that much better than anyone else? People talk about the era of Crump, Adams, Pedersen, etc. as some kind of golden age, and they were all great riders, but you could make the same argument. Gollob only won a single world title (beating Hampel) - did he only win because he had no competition? Hancock won 2 world titles with Kasprzak and Jonsson behind him each time, hardly bulletproof. I think it's very harsh to crab Bartosz for not having any competition when this is his 10th season as a GP regular, and he's had zero competition aside from Laguta until now? Was 3x World Champion Woffinden not competition in 2020 when he walloped him by 16 points?

This is the main downside with it, I agree with you on that. It'd be lovely to sit down and know every rider can score a maximum of 21, and once, for example, Zmarzlik gets to X on the night then Kurtz cannot win. It takes away from it a lot when nobody knows, or only one boffin has worked it out.

Double post.

Yep, barely anything in it. And, as someone on here pointed out a while back, Bartosz seems to focus his attention primarily on his closest challenger (Kurtz, in this case). If the sprint race didn't exist, or 1st place counted double every other week, or finals in Poland only had 3 laps, or virtually anything else, I'm almost certain Bartosz would adapt and ride to those conditions. He's phenomenal and so is Kurtz for pushing him. I genuinely think Kurtz could be a big player for a long time.

What a load of whingers. It was an absolute pleasure to watch the soon to be best of all time at his brilliant best. Brady Kurtz is a more than worthy opponent, the man simply cannot be rattled. An excellent stadium, great atmosphere and the 2 best riders in the world leaving nothing out there - there is zero to be unhappy with. I might agree that it'd be a shame if Kurtz loses because of a sprint race - except he knew as well as Bartosz (and the others) the rules of the game, and there were lots of opportunities to score outside of one sprint race. I can't wait for Vojens to see how it'll play out, it'll be a shame for whoever has to lose in this epic. I wish I was going!!

I'm almost certain that Peter Schroeck is a social experiment to see how inept a team manager can be before they get sacked. How can he genuinely stand there - with a smile on his face I'll add - and say the riders need to pull their fingers out but there's not much he can do about that. It's quite amazing to watch as a neutral, probably not as fun for Oxford fans.

If he was so altruistic he could've at least given Bartosz his £7.5k a meeting instead of wasting money on Zagar and Rew 😝

Maybe a ban won't make much difference in some situations, but why should the rider suffer if they're the ones not being paid? What if Tungate had the opportunity of another team place and couldn't take it up because he was banned for withholding his services? Who knows what the real truth is here. Let's face it, Tungate is hardly Mr. Reliable at the best of times, but everything always seems so focused on the riders. If it's a crap track, riders are 'whining', if they're not getting paid they should refuse to turn up, etc. Maybe it's time they started properly investigating these things and punishing the club if they're to blame. It's not as if a points deduction would bother Oxford this season, but it might send some sort of message.

Janowski it is. Like being teased Lego for Christmas and then ending up with a lump of coal.

It would probably increase numbers/interest but I also can't see it happening. Then again, I'd be amazed if it was Laguta. It'd be one thing to test the waters of reintroducing the Russians in a nothing GP, but to do it on Laguta's home track with only 3pts in the title race...? Bold move. For that reason I hope it happens!