YeOldPitGate

Yes Ray was doing mostly second half's when I was going the stand outs were himself, Sean Wilson and Andy Phillips who was at Wolves. Martin Rogers heart was in the right place and he always tried to promote the team I can only assume he had a shoestring budget that's why it all looked so good when Simmo and Bill Barker took over we on paper had a powerhouse team of Lynn specialists there must have been 3k-4k at the first home meeting and I think it was us and Bradford who had the financial backing of the Ham brothers who were favourites. Six months later all the Lynn specialists other than Lance King who had a couple of bad knocks looked dire Bo Peterson went from unbeatable round Lynn to awful. I loved it when Bill was in charge he used to wander round selling raffle tickets and you could always nab him for a catch up and things did look promising for a while when we had Loram and Henka and the odd glimpse of the old Mike Lee.

If world titles were judged over the first three yards Bricey would have more titles than Bartoz he could outrap anyone the problem was most of the time he was on a flymo. Yep those teams during the mid 80's we would be in with a sniff then you would have a critical heat where it was Nielson and Wigg (virtually unbeatable at Lynn) v Brice and Einar

Who was stingray ?

Bonkers again and poor old Tolley stumped up, if he manages to get Cradley up and running he needs to get a good team around him and stop paying bang average riders wages that Emil and Kurtz would warrant.

I think it was later than that someone better informed than me commentated that they only won once which was Swindon away Einar got a 15 point max which meant he scraped above a six point average so Rogers could have him back in 1987, with all due respect to Einar I was hoping he wouldn't make the cut. We had a truly dreadful team that year we got Richard Knight who went from world beater at Lynn to seven point man which I think in hindsight for a few years prior to Richard's arrival we were so bad we made him look gp standard. Who remembers Kevin Brice he was pretty much nailed on for fourth place by the second bend but was the best trapper ever, I remember one meeting we were in with a shout against Cradley and it came down to the last heat and Brice out trapped Gunderson like he was standing still the crowd erupted but it was all over coming out of the second bend. Halcyon days still remember the mental lynn fan "nutter who would sink 10-15 pints in the bar come out every time Richard Knight was getting ready to race shout "Richard Knight " at 20 thou decibels you could have heard him in Glasgow and before tapes even went up he would be back in the bar he never watched a race all season. He was about 11- 12 stone but looked hard as nails but so long as you nodded approvingly to his Richard Knight war cry you were safe.

60% chance if five teams not bad odds.

He's just taken huge advantage of the promoters opening the doors to the double dip trough.

It is bonkers on the one hand you have to give credit that they are prepared to stump up and loose money to keep the tracks going in some cases serious sum's are burned through but equally you think as you highlight you could not decide to deal yourself a worse set of cards if you tried to make your product as unattractive to fans and sponsors alike as has been the case this year.

Might be cheaper to get Picko in.

I think they need to plan on 90% minimum of danes, poles and Swedes exiting UK completely in 2027 Phil we need to try and somehow get more UK riders interested/back and hopefully we can find a way to get most of the Aussie youngsters over and the odd one or two young yanks also.

But as we know Phil the issue is the powers that be need to be getting on a plan to cope with it ideally now. In the perfect world two leagues of 8 with the top league being championship light standard I think doubling up would have to stay in some form say for the bottom 3-4 riders to make it pay for the UK based riders. What mustn't happen but probably will is keeping the old fingers crossed the Poles don't go through with the one other league ruling and planning that all will be okay and its same as usual then finding out in mid Jan they aren't rolling it back and its the usual panic stations.

Christ you better have a huge budget for damage to the air fence every other meeting, how that boy didn't kill himself multiple times over when I used to watch him lord knows.

Assuming they run somewhere who are Northampton going to end up with as a number one I did wonder if Lemon might sacrifice Kurtz for the bigger picture, but if not its looking like Brum 2025 best case for Northampton assuming they run somewhere.

He's going to have to find a way of ideally getting an 8 team top league and 8 team second division I think doubling up will have to stay due to shortage of riders. Given Poland and one other league in 2027 I think the long awaited reset will be forced to happen at most likely a sub current championship standard as if the Poland ruling happens most of the remaining top guns I would imagine will depart.

The words "plan quickly" Mike not something you will associated with British Speedway the go to is "react at the absolute last minute"

Now where talking two lots of play off's also to get the tills ringing.

Agreed with us now so far behind Poland if the one other league comes in most top riders will surely pick Denmark or Sweden due to logistics, Would there be merit in forming from whatever is left a top eight league of championship standard and then a championship lite league for another eight teams agreed it won't be pretty but I would imagine we must be down to 90% of the fans being the die hards now.

If serious money ever came in that would be probably the best way forward and then lease out like a franchise model the promotion to interested parties but you would have one big dog hopefully acting in the sports interest rather than eveyone pulling in purely their own direction.

Good to hear phil, didnt the mob who originally ran the gp series buy Reading back in the day when Sudden Sam was on 70-80k for pretty much high fiving the team ?

Who are they Phil the new promoting company ?

There that desperate for teams I think the fit and proper person bar will be set at a very low level.

Didn't Mike Bacon qualify as a rising star at nearly 30 ?

Spot on i think it will be a big ask now for Ipswich to put a half decent side together let alone if Northampton do happen. Its going to take someone with serious bags to burn when you look at it you are going to be getting the very last left overs to form a team, either running at a place with no heritage or at possibly Oxford under a different brand name where its already been proven the Oxford public don't want three teams. No tv deal rumoured either, who would be bonkers and rich enough to take this on ?

Tell me about it Iain I stopped going the year after Cradley brought Hamill over after that I forget about speedway until I started watching it again on tv the night Harris beat Greg in the final at Cardiff so you might well be right. In the SGP'S though he was such a good trapper most of the time he was out front, but that race his hand got caught in the mudguard he was incredibly lucky 9/10 it could have had his arm off but I think he got away with a broken finger/nuckle.

Yes both these lads should have big futures and be core England regulars in 5-6 years time, just need to stay grounded, not take on to much to soon and most importantly avoid big injuries, one of the reasons Hancock and Nielson went on so long was they didn't have many really bad smashes , all be it Hancock got lucky when he got his hand stuck in Neils mudguard.