YeOldPitGate

He will be in arm chair dozing off and on the odd times he's awake will be telling anyone within earshot how ---- they are and how great he is.

Agreed Dean back then even the top riders in the old national league filled reserve berths in the top league as number 8's and most struggled big time even against the normal top league reserves as you say even though Simmo was near the end of his career he blitzed that league with his feet pretty much up whilst smoking a cigar.

Spot on Bagpuss as ever the key is having a rider come in on false average and Poole have not one but two young lads who will be prime examples of this. Then so long as the top five are half decent you will be there or there abouts. Well Poole have one of the best riders in this league , Zach Cook if back should really push on and Gilkes if he stays injury free has potential as well. Final point the Fords don't also hang around if they are struggling at the halfway stage.

I've only been to live speedway a couple of time post 1992 but didn't they try getting the bookies involved previously and it flopped ?

I remember when Simmo pulled a stroke and managed to drop down into the old second division with Hackney I've a feeling he ended up a nigh eleven point average and pretty much achieved it with his eyes closed.

And boy did those lads have a hoover up , ultimately you can't blame them as it could all be over for them tomorrow through a bad smash but I'm sure if push came to shove they would have taken a pay increase of 50k on what they had the year before but most of the promoters blew their share of the annual windfall on a 100k increase.

I think its probably down to Stock cars holding less meetings and your not facing seeing the same team 4-6 times per season syndrome. I remember going to Lynn a few years back when it was a world team cup round (Billy Hamill) had come out of retirement to help the USA for the event. This was my first meeting after many years away and there must have been 5-6k turn out for it so it shows for the right event people will still come. Maybe a shorter calendar for the top league if it survives might be one of the ways forward with less but better meetings run over May to August possibly.

Always breaking records UK promoters just not the right one's

Thanks Preston take zero pleasure in thinking this is the last knockings but I realistically can't see any good way out moving forward hopefully i'm wrong but think unlikely.

It might be a case that we just have to accept the sport in the UK at the level we have known it previously is now over. I mentioned before i stopped going in my late teens in the early 90's when I discovered nightclubs , fast forward 33 years and nightclubs that pulled in thousands of people on a Saturday night then are all gone. The nearest city to me had 10 night clubs in the early 90's now it has one tiny one, and loads of pubs have closed over that time frame also, places that from 1990 -2005 if you had said to me one day all these will be gone you would have thought never going to happen but it did. Its accelerated since then with social media really taking off a lot of the youth of today have near zero interest in going out, online gaming, dating app's so you don't physically have to trawl out rounds pubs any more looking for a likely partner. Why bother with restaurants get Deliveroo to drop off a pizza to your door, Blockbusters video gone the way of the Dodo when streaming caught on. I occasionally look back at threads on here from 10 years or so back, and there's loads of names I come across who are no longer posting, I would guess there is maybe 50 of us die hards on here now posting and hoping a miracle happens so even this forum is probably on last knockings. Really sad how its ended up all be it the sport has actually limped on for far longer than i thought it would but these days its a struggle to attract punters even when you are offering a professional leisure opportunity let alone when you are trying to attract people to a sport where the riders all ride for different teams every other week and after the first month in you can pretty much guarantee every week from the two teams on show there will most likely be at least 2-4 of the combined 14 riders missing. It really does look like checkmate is nearing I would say one big league but the argument that there has to be some form of even dire top league to subsidise the bottom league as far as rider earnings goes does have merit as an argument, so it really is a case of least bad outcome. I would imagine it will be a five team top league in 2026 with a view to finding a sacraficial lamb to get it up to six in 2027 unless someone with a load of money and no business sense can be shoe horned into getting Northampton running in 2027.

Didn't Paul ride for a bit also ?, I stopped going at the time Martin was starting to clean up with Eastbourne in the second division and he was getting the odd ride out for Oxford.

Is the lad Michael West any good ? could he be lured over on a 4 point average possibly .

The fact that phone calls were made to Cradley and Peterborough who don't even currently have a track shows the level of magnitude of the ostrich approach to things.

Reg and Ron in contention for the numbers 6 & 7 spots so the rumour mill reckons

Great track but it was bad enough spotting fans at Brum last year can you imagine what 700-800 turning up in a place that can hold 40 thou would look like.

Can't see anything on the Glasgow site who are the other four riders ? other than the three mentioned here already.

The fact that Cradley and Peterborough are even being asked when they are trying to just get agreement to run currently shows the level of the huge problems to be solved by the Prem League. Other than someone with huge money to burn and agreeing to run at the untested Northampton venue or running say a Swindon team at Oxford I can't see that they will get a sixth team from anywhere, this also assumes to new owners are found for Ipswich and Sheffield given their might not even be a league for the new owners to run in.

Despite his many distractors he brought more cash into the sport than anyone , granted he took out more than anyone also but there's probably no one else I can think of who brought in more than seven figures to speedway, wouldn't be a bad outcome if he came back, he's certainly not short of money.

This is another of the many problems with British Speedway 10-15 years ago you would probably have 5-6 rich fans who would be willing to set light to 100k per season for the kudos of owning the local speedway club, these days due to more pull on everyone's pound you might get one or two if your really lucky, hence as many on here have said clubs are pretty much worthless.

You do have to question the intelligence of the fella to come out with that publicaly even as you say if it is a shoe in, now if a bodge is put together and their are two leagues in 2026, he's alienated pretty much every Scunthorpe fan and potential local sponsor in that area to. Talk about getting a 12 baur shotgun and deciding to aim it at your own foot at point blank.

I thought Mick said on here a few weeks back they were looking at championship if they can get a foot back in the door as starters.

Granted that also is a big ask.

Isn't Batch back at Worky ?

Could be the best least worst case outcome if they have to run with five teams, twice home and away (defo not three times that will never run). With a view to trying something more sustainable/sellable for 2027.

He's certainly not afraid to chuck money into the sport I just wonder if he may be put off by the thought of a speedway club that is profitable.