YeOldPitGate

Don't forget in line with the general speedway trend there's probably only 40 of us knocking around this forum these days.

This is the problem clubs are essentially worthless you are being asked to buy into a dying business model so the only likely buyers will be long term fans, it used to be that when a club was in trouble their would be several interested parties but with speedways ageing demographic a lot of the wealthy fans are now pushing up the daisies leaving an ever shrinking pool to possibly be the latest saviour of the club/s.

There are still rumours of a six team top league given nobody in the championship wants to commit financial suicide by moving up is there a likelyhood someone with money to burn is going to take on Northampton ?

Thing is reading between the lines it looked like the plan was Bewley to Ipswich and Belle Vue retaining Kurtz in 2026 if Belle Vue end up retaining Dan it could leave Ippo having to attempt at some kind of strength in depth approach whatever that may look like.

Bit like signing for Scunny and then saying I'm off if Sheff are in one league, Shotgun load, point at foot, pull trigger, repeat.

Agreed I was late teens when Benn, Watson, Eubank, Collins, Hameed, Tyson and Holyfield were starting to all come on the scene the late 80's - late 90's were brilliant years early Tyson easily the best heavyweight I have ever scene and Benn snr was my all time fave he had some incredible wars over the years. One of my all time fave quotes "lets have some parliamentary procedure"

Agreed it will be the most rigged fight ever AJ might be ten years past his best but there's a real risk he could kill Paul if he hit him with an uppercut so the word will have to go down come in one 20% of your ability tops but your right it will still pull in a fortune in readies.

Tony Rikardson wasn't bad either.

To be fair M.D, Mike after he won the world championship was about as reliable as the british summer at that point moving forward. I remember his comeback meeting at Lynn after his ban a year out and he beat Erik Gunderson the then world champion on his first race back but from that point he just started to lose interest and missed loads of meetings he didn't fancy. It was a real shame in his final comeback early 90's as to how far he had fallen Andy Meredith who at this point was a wobbler was ahead of him and Mike was lining him up perfectly to pass on every single corner but he just didn't have the bottle anymore to pull the move off.

Will there be the usual hide and seek games with Cook this season.

If there's only five teams they might as well go straight to the play off's, the strongest looking side gets a first round bye, and whoever scores the least out of the remaining four is out with the top three going through with the bye team to the semis. It might be a case as others have floated maybe in 2026 the weakest two prem sides are amalgamated into the championship and the top three try to put decent sides together with a view to having a euro league with Sweden and Denmark given half the riders are based abroad it probably wouldn't be much more expensive flight wise and the likes of Harris, Lawson, Pickering etc could still double down.

Agreed Louis did as much as can be expected of a modern day promoter but as you say if the rest are losing money, or turning up with half the riders missing your own product is going to get dragged down regardless in the race to the bottom.

I take my hat off to any rider who has the bottle to race but when people say natural talent the likes of Kelly Moran, Darcy Ward, Henka Gustaffson and Mark Loram are the kind of riders that come to my mind.

Dear old JD had the best equipment and was well funded but he would have been better off at longtrack, I remember when he signed for Lynn poss 88 under Simmo and Bill Barker he was a good trapper but coming out of the second bend he would be leaving a gap on the inside the titantic could have got through. And JD'S riding the boards wasn't in the Henka or Loram style it was more just looking uncomfortable on the bike, to be fair he had an above average career but he never looked suited to speedway to me he would have been better on an oval twice the size of Lynn where he could drift off 20 metres from the inside line.

I'm having visions of a hare being installed on the inside of speedway tracks.

The old pit gate would play up and the final would be rained off after a black cloud spotted in North Lynn at midday.

Would he be though given Plymouth signed Pederson and Crump in the same season ?

What about Gusts seems suited to big fast tracks

I would imagine a lot of Lynn, and Peterborough fans made the trip over for the final.

Your forgetting the usual three week breaks every month in the peak summer months , fear not the most lucrative play offs meetings will still be run back end of October when its back down to 7-8 degrees at night and the rain is back.

Given only five teams and lord knows who Ipswich and Sheff will get to ride for them its probably not a bad shout.

If they both return one will have to elsewhere or your going to have the witches go from champs to having Rambo Lambo and Jack Smith as the spearhead.

Isn' Tony about a hundred years old now ?

Thanks

Agreed but they would need a decent league sponsor to cover the flights in and out, but it is something that could potentially work well for all three countries and ideally if 6 & 7 protected to home grown youngsters could help develop the next generation to negate current polish dominance.