arthur cross

There hasn't been any announcement from Sky or the BSPA yet about the end of speedway on Sky but too many signs haven't been good, especially after Sky chose not to renew their Grand Prix coverage at the end of last season because too many of those meetings were difficult to squeeze into their crowded Saturday-evening schedules. Clearly, domestic speedway on weekday evenings remains easier for Sky to schedule but it's noticeable that they're now much happier to shift Super League rugby league (which runs a February-to-October season) into whichever evenings suit them depending on whether football's in its season or not. Hence Super League has been given a high-profile on Mondays as well as its usual Fridays during June and July but now the football's back, Super League's been switched into Thursdays alongside Fridays ... of course, rugby league's far less weather-dependent than speedway so Sky's far more guaranteed to be able to build-up to each game with trailers on its other channels and previews on Sky Sports News ... a few years ago, speedway was given the "Monday Night Live" banner outside the football season but that type of big billing is clearly now going rugby league's way instead. Sky have seemed to like the concept of a Champions League for Europe's top speedway clubs and that's come close to being started in recent years but always seems just out of reach, maybe because of the problem of the top riders having to choose between their Polish, Swedish or British club in a Champions League when they normally represent all 3 (sometimes on consecutive days). Then there's the problem of how many British clubs would want to be involved in a "made-for-Sky" competition running alongside a continuation of the Elite League ... there's little doubt Eastbourne wouldn't go near it because they've consistently preferred fewer home meetings in recent years and Belle Vue would probably be in the same boat until their new stadium's built ... I'm not sure Birmingham or Swindon would want to gamble on extra "made-for-Sky" meetings at the moment while Peterborough always seem to struggle for the right dates to use their Showground so that probably makes them doubtful as well ... hence, unless any of the Premier League clubs could be tempted upwards, at least for just the few "made-for-Sky" meetings, we're already down to only 5 entrants, namely Coventry, King's Lynn, Lakeside, Poole & Wolverhampton, which looks too small to attract Sky's enthusiasm (the existing deal for the Elite League clearly stipulates a minimum of 8 clubs, otherwise there's a get-out clause for Sky). This time last year, greyhound racing was at a very similar crossroads to speedway's situation now regarding Sky coverage ... the dogs had an annual schedule of just over 30 nights on Sky that hadn't changed much since the mid-1990's but Sky made it clear they wouldn't be renewing on similar terms when the existing deal ran out at the end of 2012. The dogs did find a solution to keep themselves on Sky but they're down to just over 20 meetings this year and effectively they've had to underwrite the production costs which are now paid via part of the bookmakers' expected profits on the Sky races ... the bookies accepted this deal because it was clear most of these events wouldn't take place without Sky's coverage so they might as well give up a modest percentage instead of getting nothing at all from these events. The dogs also had far more other options than speedway that they could use on their way to finding that solution including being able to show some of the qualifying heats (and even a whole event like the Scottish Derby) on the Racing Post's 5-nights-a-week greyhound channel on Sky-212. Even so, Sky didn't show any greyhound racing in January or February this year (they'd normally have had a couple of nights each month) before the deal thrashed out between the dogs, the bookies and Sky finally began in March ... it's also very noticeable that the production values are well down this year compared to previously, notably the betting updates and the camerawork during the races. Speedway doesn't have a Racing Post-style channel to fall back on and good luck trying to persuade engine tuners to put a cut of their profits back into speedway like the greyhound bookies have done !! Meanwhile, Eurosport are delighted, maybe even gob-smacked, about their viewing figures but (correct me if I'm worng) that's totally regarding coverage they've picked up from outisde sources (BSI for the Grand Prix meetings and Polish or other broadcasters for any pairs or European events) ... I doubt either Eurosport or BT have speedway high up their wish-list if they've got to fund its production.

Top-division football crowds have increased where spectator facilities have been greatly improved but a knock-on effect has been that lower-level clubs who find it much harder to invest in ground improvements have lost some of their fans whether it's directly to those better venues or simply just the home comforts of watching so many more games on TV. How many speedway clubs have greatly improved their facilities in the last 30 years ? !! ... how many speedway fans now prefer home comforts ? !! My introduction to watching football was only 10 minutes' walk away when my dad took me as a 7-year-old in the 1970's to what would now be the 3rd-level of non-league ... at today's prices, it would've cost less than £10 between us and we had the perfect mixture of live action plus the buzz of following all the scores because one of the supporters was updating a couple of clipboards ... now on a Saturday, we'd get our live action from the 12.45 & 5.30 kick-offs on TV while Jeff Stelling's mob are a bit more hi-tech and entertaining than a bloke with a radio and a pen !! The top two divisions had no choice about ground improvements after the investigations into Bradford/1985 and Hillsborough/1989 but what could have been a financial nightmare for them was rescued by Sky's willingness to chuck mega-millions at football which created the Premier League in 1992 ... in turn, the shiny new world of the Premier League generated much more media coverage and so the top clubs found it was worthwhile expanding their capacities or building new grounds. Take a few examples ... Arsenal's Highbury could squeeze in 55,000 when both ends were still terracing but that capacity shrank to 38,000 as an all-seater, hence their move half-a-mile away to the Emirates Stadium with room for 60,000 seats ... Man United have hugely expanded 3 sides of Old Trafford to go beyond 75,000 seats (well above their capacity in the latter days of the terraces) and want to do the tv-camera side as well to make it 85,000 but there's the snag of a local railway line that runs only a few yards behind that one remaining old stand. Man City suffered one of the biggest cutbacks in capacity at Maine Road because they were the last really big club with an entire side (the Kippax) still terraced as well as both ends so they shrank from over 50,000 to just 34,000 all-seater, making their link-up with the 2002 Commonwealth Games stadium for 45,000 seats a no-brainer (especially seeing how well the 1996 Atlanta Olympic stadium was adapted into the new home for baseball's Atlanta Braves). It's no surprise that all of Swansea, Stoke, Hull and Reading are currently either in the Premier League or have had spells at that level in recent years on the back of building new grounds to end long spells in the doldrums ... further down the order, Brighton and Doncaster are great examples of clubs who've attracted bigger crowds by building new grounds with realistic capacities ... on the other hand, Portsmouth remain trapped inside crumbling Fratton Park's 20,000 capacity and have sunk to the 4th-level after financial chaos that wouldn't have been so terrible if they'd been able to house 30,000 in their Premier League days. There aren't many examples of new stadiums proving disastrous ... just Coventry (horrible miscalculations about a fair rent, followed by wretched stubbornness when those calculations proved wrong) and Darlington (25,000 capacity for a team never likely to attract above 10,000 with Middlesbrough, Sunderland & Newcastle all less than an hour away) ... there's also Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium built for the 1991 World Student Games but about to go derelict now that Rotherham United have built their new home to end a temporary tenancy and it's been proved rugby league's Sheffield Eagles aren't lucrative-enough permanent tenants. I'm sure it frustrates domestic speedway fans who don't follow football or Grand Prix speedway but clubs have had to face up to those events' economic forces ... I'm sure any of our Saturday tracks can tell if it's a Grand Prix night or not, especially if their local weather's iffy because most Grand Prix meetings start just as the local fans are deciding whether it's worth going along to their track ... meanwhile, the Newcastle Diamonds' usual 6.30 start on a Sunday has been routinely amended to 7.00 whenever Newcastle United are in the 4.00 game on Sky and that's done even if the football team are playing away because of the time it takes to get from the armchair or pub to the track rather than just from St James' Park. One final thought ... plenty of football clubs (or indeed other sports clubs) have benefitted from people aged in their 30's & 40's becoming heavily involved which greatly increases the chances of being able to engage with their clubs' younger generations of fans ... now look at speedway where there's a noticeably smaller proportion of 30's-&-40's in prominent roles and that's going to make it even harder for speedway to update itself. Speedway's struggling to find enough fans at the moment ... I'd argue it's struggling even more to find its next generation of promoters and administrators because very few of its younger fans seem remotely interested in taking up those roles in the future.

There's a huge difference between La Liga being snapped up by Sky just before the start of a season (it's been the same for several years with Sky's coverage of American Football's NFL) and the prospect of Elite League speedway doing a TV deal in March next year. Sky's money towards La Liga or the NFL is a tiny fraction of the total TV-money going into those leagues ... it's effectively bonus money for the clubs in those competitions rather than a vital aspect of their pre-season budgeting. As a rough estimate, it costs each Elite League club about £20,000 to run a pair of home-&-away meetings against another club but at least £5,000 of that's been covered by the Sky money in recent seasons ... given the restrictions of team building in the Elite League thanks to the points limit and double-upper rules, how do you expect promoters to build their 2014 lineups without knowing if they'll have that sizeable a chunk of their budget to spend ? ... it would be like asking Barcelona or the San Francisco 49ers to get ready for a new season with mega-millions suddenly wiped off their plans. Sky have maintained for several years that they're really pleased with the viewing figures they get for speedway compared to other sports that might be regarded as having similar-sized fan bases ... but it's also now at least a year since it became clear Sky are keen to cut their production costs on any of their sports to make up for how much they've spent on both Formula One and the new 3-year deal for Premier League football that started with yesterday's games. As pandorum's pointed out already, speedway's dependency on the weather means its production costs for the year have to include an amount that they're expecting to write off with the washouts that are likely to crop up during the season (don't forget, Poole's leg of the playoff final last year finally went ahead at the 4th attempt which caused stacks of rescheduling chaos at Sky, never mind the extreme financial cost of booking all the crew four times just to show one meeting) ... it doesn't matter how keenly Sky's producers talk about speedway's viewing figures, the chances are Sky's accountants will be heard even louder by their management. It also means any other broadcaster's accountants (eg, BTor Eurosport) are unlikely to put British domestic speedway too high up their wish list. The only other very weather-dependent sport that Sky invest in is cricket but they put up with the rain and bad light in that sport because they still get their hands on events like the Ashes, the rest of England's Tests, the World Cup and the 20/20 World Cup that feature prominently in the sporting calendar and back pages ... by giving up Grand Prix coverage, clearly because they couldn't guarantee room for it in their Saturday-evening schedules, Sky have already removed speedway's "crown jewel" from their portfolio, making it much harder for their producers to justify to their accountants that it's still worth covering the domestic action. By the way, to answer Bavarian's comparison of tv-coverage between ice hockey and speedway, you have to remember British ice-hockey has never been anywhere near a high-enough standard to attract any current world-class stars into its clubs in the same way that both Poole and Wolves began this year with 2 Grand Prix names in each of their 1-to-7... yes, British ice hockey has had to adjust to less tv-coverage and it's meant some big-city teams closing down (notably Newcastle) but speedway's readjustment if Sky pull out will be much greater.

Thanks flagrag for your latest post backing up your earlier news about the prospective rent for the stadium. At least DH's valuations/demands all seem to be so stupidly wide of being realistic that he's digging his own downfall with very little room for sympathy from anyone that matters. For some dreadful reason, he appears to always think that reviving speedway in Leicester guarantees himself immunity from any criticism ... yes, he deserves plenty of thanks for the revival but it's horrible to see/hear about so many hassles behind-the-scenes when plenty of them could clearly be solved with just a little bit of diplomacy. As flagrag points out, any new promoter coming into Leicester would need to be overseen by a nearby promoter as a "buddy" for the first season ... indeed, that's what happened with Sheffield providing the "buddy" help for DH's first season as well as the first-ever opposition at the track. However, DH's attitude to some of that help was poor ... in one case, it could have been regarded as a lot worse than that but for the sake of this forum's future and in respect of this country's libel laws, I doubt I can explain further on here.

I fully respect flagrag's good reputation for well-connected and accurate information on many other threads on this forum so I'm certainly not questioning the accuracy of whether any new promotion at Leicester could face a weekly rent of £8,000 Instead, I'll simply point out that such a figure is massively in excess of the weekly rent any other British track pays its stadium landlord (and that includes the Elite League) ... it wouldn't be fair on other clubs to reveal what any of them are currently paying but I suspect every one of them would seriously consider if it's worth remaining open (probably most of them would close down at once) if they were suddenly faced with so big a demand for weekly stadium rent. To put it into context, the reported financial figurework for Belle Vue's new national stadium involves the Aces effectively renting the track by repaying an initial £4,500,000 building loan from Manchester City Council over 60 years. If the council loan is interest-free and the Aces staged just the basic 14 home meetings in the Elite League each year, their rent would be costing them £75,000 per year so that would work out at approximately £5,350 per meeting to rent a stadium designed to a high enough standard to host a World Cup final or other FIM events ... that rent might also include a cut of the profits from food, drink and the car park. I suspect Belle Vue's rent bill would also include some interest payments on top of that simple calculation of £75,000 per year ... but equally, they'd be looking to stage more meetings than just the basic home league schedule so effectively those extra meetings would be the ones whose rent covered any interest (and any showpiece meetings attracting bigger crowds would make a cut of the food/drink/carpark profits even more useful).. Hence it could still be reckoned that somewhere around £5,350 for a shiny new World Cup stadium would be one of the starting-points for working out how much rent to charge elsewhere (although even that big an amount with some food/drink profits to offset it would still be way out of reach for most clubs) ... on that basis, good luck finding anyone queuing up to offer £8,000 rent every weekend just to get the front gate open at Leicester !! I suspect the current promoter is finding it tough to keep up the repayments on any loans that were taken out to finance the building of the stadium a few years ago and so the pressure from those repayments has led him towards wanting such a high weekly rent from any new promoter ... however, he'll have to take a giant chunk out of that £8,000 before making any progress. By the way, is that £8,000 "the price with VAT" or "the price without VAT" ? !! ... because that might be another £1,600 that needs stumping up.

I've never seen Paschal Taggart's greyhound plans linked in any way with the alternative of trying Beddington Lane and I can see several reasons why that's the case (the last of which is especially likely to interest/amaze Parsloes & gustix !!) ... I seriously recommend all of you have a look at the google map/satellite of the area by putting "Traq Motor Racing" into the search box (and don't be surprised when it gives the address as Jessops Way in Croydon). Firstly, Mr Taggart appears increasingly to want to become the crusading saviour of Wimbledon Stadium's greyhound existence rather than the creator of a new home for greyhound racing anywhere in South London ... clearly, in the same way that he's already played an important part in the revamping of Dublin's traditional top track (Shelbourne Park), there's a lot of merit in modernizing an existing well-known venue to provide the continuity of road-signs and the spectators' habits of how they travel to the venue and where they might eat/drink beforehand or afterwards (you could say the same on a much grander scale, but sadly without greyhounds or speedway, about the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium). Mr Taggart is very attached to the historical aspect of Wimbledon Stadium and still takes part in that sport as an owner (he was in the syndicate for one of the beaten finalists in this year's Greyhound Derby) ... I suspect he would only start considering alternative sites like Beddington Lane once it's totally obvious there's no hope of revamping the existing Wimbledon site. But secondly, even if he has marked his card about Beddington Lane, what would he have found ? ... yes, by far its biggest bonus is the tram stop next door, not only because that would provide easy access for the more locally-based of Wimbledon's existing customers but also because it opens up easy access from Croydon whose population is a good deal bigger than any of the towns to its west like Wimbledon, Mitcham or Sutton. On the down side, although the google satellite map of the site shows at least 3 (maybe 4) go-kart tracks beside each other, their total area is only about 60-percent of the total combined area of the existing Wimbledon Stadium and its car park ... there's no doubt a proper-sized "greyhound-around-speedway" circuit could be built across the various tracks currently used by the go-karters but the major problem is fitting-in the upmarket facilities for a minimum of 4,000 spectators around that circuit (probably the same space as you'd need for 8,000 fans just wanting a seat for watching football/rugby) plus the car park to accommodate those spectators who don't live within walking distance of the trams. Mr Taggart clearly believes (and I agree with him on this) that the only point in going ahead with building a new dog track is if you've got enough room to build facilities that are big enough and lucrative enough to make the whole thing profitable ... hence at Beddington Lane, he needs to buy some of the adjoining land and he can't go north (tramline in the way) or east (existing industrial units in the way) ... he's limited to the north-west by the edge of Mitcham Junction golf course while the railway line nearby on the west is the busy suburban line that links several of London's biggest stations with Sutton and Epsom. Hence the only sizeable extra land is the marshy (probably ex-sewage) land to the south ... even if that marshland can be bought at a fair price, you'd better add on the significant cost of draining it to a safe enough standard for building anything on it that you want to be used by thousands of people at the same time. Noisewise ... the small housing estate to the east of Beddington Lane was built after the railway line first existed (it was the long-established suburban branch line from Wimbledon to Croydon before it was included in the 1990's plans for Croydon's trams) so I doubt those residents could object much to the buzzing-sound of go-karts adding to the regular timetabled-noise of the trains or the slightly extra traffic generated by the go-kart participants getting to the track ... however, as we've seen around the rest of the country, it's a different matter altogether persuading residents that it'll be ok when a speedway meeting turns up every week and several hundred (hopefully, a couple of thousand) cars full of spectators want to squeeze in nearby some rather cramped residential streets. All of which helps explains Mr Taggart's apparent lack of interest is Beddington Lane ... but standby, Parsloes and gustix in particular, because the go-kart site isn't fully in the London Borough of Merton !!! ... at best, only a northern chunk of it is in LB-Merton. It's got a Croydon postal address but it's mostly just inside the London Borough of Sutton because it's close to the junction of all 3 of those boroughs !! ... the marshland extension would definitely be in LB-Sutton. Go to the google-map and here's how the borough boundaries fit in as a T-junction with Merton to the north & northwest, Sutton to the south & south-west and Croydon having everything half-a-mile to the east (the next tram stop at Therapia Lane marks the final few yards of Sutton before Croydon) ... Beddington Lane tram stop is in LB-Sutton by such a small margin that if you stand on the level crossing of the tramline & the B272-road, you can easily see the "Merton" boundary sign looking north ... I dont know whether there's been a tweaking of the borough boundaries here to keep all the industrial units under the same banner but if that's the case, it'll almost certainly have put everything into LB-Sutton because the bigger batch of industrial units further south beside Beddington Lane are all in LB-Sutton but all have Croydon postcodes. Regardless of Mr Taggart, any speedway fans hoping to see the bikes racing around Beddington Lane had better brace themselves for lobbying the London Borough of Sutton and that won't be easy on the environmental front !! ... the Lib-Dems stunned the seemingly-dominant Conservatives by winning control of the council in 1986 and they've held onto overall control in all 6 local elections since then (local elections in London boroughs involve all the seats being contested together once every 4 years, next in May 2014) ... Sutton's Lib-Dems have always been proud of trying to be London's greenest borough and they also captured both of the borough's MP's from the Conservatives in 1997 and have held onto both in all of 2001, 2005 & 2010 ... good luck establishing a new crowd-attracting motorsport against that background !! As usual, I hope this lengthy post proves useful for the rest of you.

Yes, Phil helped the earlier generations of his family as track bookies at Wimbledon. I'm sure William Hill would love to hold the Greyhound Derby at a smarter venue but their hands are tied because the GRA themselves own the rights to staging and promoting the Greyhound Derby ... it's not like golf or cricket where the major venues bid a few years in advance to host the Open Championship or Test matches because the greyhound authorities don't have any say in organizing any of their sport's big events. Instead, the rights to stage all the major dog races historically belong to their respective tracks and any switching of their venues is usually only within a group of tracks ... for example, Sunderland's Northern Puppy Derby each autumn was switched a few years ago to be included within Newcastle's All England Cup festival at that time of year because both those tracks are owned by William Hill and it left Sunderland clear to concentrate on William Hill's hefty sponsorship of a new festival each July. It appears William Hill's chequebook doesn't have enough clout to break the GRA's stranglehold so whatever William Hill or the rest of greyhound racing would like, the only potential Derby venues at the moment are the 4 remaining GRA tracks at Wimbledon, Hall Green, Perry Barr and Belle Vue ... another GRA track in West London, White City, always hosted the Derby until 1984 after which that famous venue (it hosted London's first Olympics in 1908) closed for the newer BBC buildings that were built near QPR's ground ... Wimbledon's staged every Derby from 1985 onwards. Since Wimbledon mothballed the bigger spectator facilities along the old home straight (and revamped the Mick The Miller stand along the old back straight and moved the finish line beside it), all 4 of those tracks have fairly similar spectator capacities of between 2,000 & 3,000 but from a purely racing point of view, Wimbledon's track surface remains very highly regarded (they've looked after the dogs' requirements much better than for the spectators !!) and that's by far the best reason for the dump keeping the Derby ... on the down side, it's a traffic nightmare for Midlands/Northern trainers getting their dogs round the M25 and through the London suburbs to Wimbledon if they're drawn in the Friday session of the first two rounds of the Derby rather than on those Saturdays. If you asked me to mix together all the ideal components for a Greyhound Derby (track surface & dimensions, location & easy traffic, spectator facilities & capacity) without being tied to the GRA, I'd probably pick the stadium very well-known to speedway fans at Coventry but their larger-than-life greyhound promoter Harry Findlay has got no realistic chance of getting those rights off the GRA.

Thanks to salty for Kingstonian's red-&-white background !! ... i only mentioned the green connection because I remember the Irish media pointing out how useful it was to have a training facility with plenty of green background (seats and paintwork, not just the pitch) so close to Heathrow so maybe the Republic of Ireland helped fund the club's move to that new ground at Kingsmeadow during the Jack Charlton era. Thanks also to gustix for copying across the latest from the South London Press and here are a few background details to go with it. Phil Donaldson is a former racing manager at Catford greyhounds who switched careers to join the Racing Post greyhound desk before the GRA suddenly closed Catford in November 2003 (although in Phil's defence, I believe he just wanted a change of career rather than knowing anything handy about Catford's imminent demise) ... Phil's still with the Racing Post, he also appears a couple of times a week as a pundit on Racing Post Greyhound TV (Sky channel 212) as well as being one of the track commentators at Wimbledon dogs and he's also a lifelong supporter of both Wimbledon FC & AFC Wimbledon. Phi's report in the SLP brings their readers up-to-date with what he and his colleagues have covered in recent weeks in the Racing Post, some of which I've already mentioned in this thread including the leases granted by the GRA to the greyhound operations at their various tracks. While any length of lease is great news for the continued sporting use of Wimbledon Stadium (and so is William Hill's increasing of the 2014 Greyhound Derby prize money), you'll notice Phil has used the phrase "believed to be 5 years" for Wimbledon's lease ... what he doesn't mention in the SLP but has been mentioned elsewhere is that it's also believed that 15-year operation leases were granted for all the other GRA-owned greyhound tracks (Belle Vue in Manchester plus both Perry Barr & Hall Green in Birmingham) so that puts Wimbledon on slightly shakier ground than the rest of those tracks. Belle Vue, Perry Barr and Hall Green all have BAGS-contracts for showing races in the nation's betting shops but the GRA voluntarily re-distributed Wimbledon's BAGS-meetings around the rest of its tracks a few years ago when it said it was cheaper to open up the smaller facilities at those tracks for those daytime meetings ... the current 5-year BAGS contract between the bookmakers and all the tracks shown in betting shops finishes on 31-Dec-2015 so any negotiations for the next BAGS deal are likely to start at the end of 2014 or early 2015. Again, I hope all this info help those of you reading this forum who love your speedway but couldn't be expected to know much about the greyhound racing that's also staged at plenty of speedway tracks in this country.

A quick bit of internet-digging (notably a 19th-century pre-railway map) has led me to the following conclusions ... Yes, the ancient boundary between Wimbledon and Wandsworth was almost certainly the Wandle and as the river has retained a relatively straight line near the stadium (flowing from south to north towards the Thames), I don't think it's been significantly redirected. However, the arrival of the railway line between Earlsfield and Wimbledon to the north-west of the stadium in the later 19th-century was followed by various decisions that the land near both the railway and the river would be of much better use for industrial buildings rather than houses (the huge amount of railway sidings next to the original line are an example of the industrial rather than residential thinking). It's at this stage that the simple layout of everything west of the Wandle being in Wimbledon and everything east of the Wandle being in Wandswroth may well have been tinkered with, probably to suit any industrial businesses who developed sites on both sides of the river and didn't want to have deal with 2 different councils for the sake of a couple of hundred of yards ... these days, the industrial area beside the Wandle is split roughly 50-50 between the west bank and the east (stadium) bank with the east side probably marginally the bigger. The only problem with this tinkering is that it doesn't seem to have kept pace with the industrial expansion, leading to the Sunday market car park carve-up that gustix has recalled. Any tinkering with the original river boundary may have been carried over with the 1965 creation of the London Boroughs rather than tidied up at that time ... the whole of the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon was one of the 3 complete boroughs merged together to form the London Borough of Merton in 1965 ... meanwhile, any changes to Wandsworth's layout didn't happen near the stadium (instead, it affected districts further east like Battersea, Clapham and Streatham). = = = = = = = = = There's one extra historical note which I hope doesn't further complicate the greyhound stadium's situation but certainly caused dreadful problems and disputes for Wimbledon FC further along Plough Lane in the mid-1980's. While they were still an amateur but growing club in the 1950's, the directors of Wimbledon FC struck a deal with the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon to fund improvements to their ground. Wimbledon FC then became one of the top non-league clubs in the country before being elected into the Football League in 1977 (automatic promotion at that level didn't start until 1987) and after yo-yoing between the old 4th and 3rd Divisions, embarked on their rapid climb by winning the 1982-83 4th Division, being promoted from the 1983-84 3rd Division (runners-up to Oxford United) and then taking only 2 seasons to clinch promotion from the 1985-86 2nd Division into what we now know as the Premier League. Even in that 4th Division title-winning season, they were already searching for ways to improve what were already very basic spectator facilities on a site much more hemmed-in than at the greyhound stadium (as it turned out, the directives after both the 1985 Bradford fire and the 1989 Hillsborough disaster made sure Plough Lane hadn't a hope of remaining a profitable football ground within the top two divisions as it would have been reduced to only 6,000 all-seater capacity). But it was around Christmas 1982 that the London Borough of Merton, using the paperwork drawn up by their predecessors at the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon, claimed the 1950's deal with Wimbledon FC meant the local council were still entitled to buy back the football ground at its 1959 rateable value of just over £8,000 for whatever redevelopment they fancied ... fair enough, the football ground wasn't worth mega-millions but it was certainly worth a damn sight more than 8-grand !! Where this could matter for the greyhound stadium is on two counts ... firstly, I hope there isn't a similar historical document that could affect the greyhound stadium's development nearly 50 years after the end of the Municipal Boroughs. But secondly, it's the biggest reason why the older supporters of AFC Wimbledon are so wary of anything to do with the London Borough of Merton and that's worth bearing in mind by greyhound/speedway folk in the run-up to 11th September this year ... I know a worthwhile proportion of AFC Wimbledon fans aren't in any great hurry about their team returning into LB-Merton when they've been made so welcome in recent years just a few miles away by everyone at Kingstonian FC whose ground suits their capacity demands for the time being ... Kingstonian have long been one of the most forward-thinking non-league clubs, notably when using their traditional green-&-white colours to attract Jack Charlton's Republic of Ireland squad to use their ground as their ideal training base near Heathrow Airport in the late-80s and early-90's in the build-up to away international games. Relations between Wimbledon FC and LB-Merton remained poor after that £8,000 argument so they struggled to work together to find a suitable new site for the club after Bradford/Hillsborough (Wimbledon FC began ground-sharing with Crystal Palace in August 1991) ... the closest they came was a plan to build Wandle Valley Stadium around 1990 which would have been similar to Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium built for the 1991 World Student Games with around 20,000 capacity. Wandle Valley would have succeeded Crystal Palace's already-outdated athletics stadium that's still been hosting major meetings for another two decades but it was planned to have an artificial pitch for Wimbledon FC to share with the local community just when the top clubs became so fed up with QPR's plastic pitch that they agreed to ban their use in the top divisions ... that ban wrecked what could have been the peace-making community tie-up between Wimbledon FC and LB-Merton, hence Wandle Valley was never built with the knock-on effects a decade later of the schism between Milton Keynes Dons & AFC Wimbledon. I hope all the above info is interesting for speedway fans all over the country/world who care about seeing a revival of the Wimbledon Dons but can't be expected to know much about the sporting history at both ends of Plough Lane and how it could affect any council debates in a few weeks time ... for anyone looking at a google-map, Wimbledon FC's old ground was on the north-east corner of the traffic lights linking Plough Lane with Durnsford Road and it now houses 4 smart apartment blocks named after footballing heroes like former manager Dave Bassett and 1988 FA Cup winning scorer Lawrie Sanchez.

Thanks for that info about the car park white lines ... in that case, as I think the Sunday market probably started after the creation of the London Boroughs in 1965, maybe it took those lines in the car park to persuade the authorities to reset the borough boundary so that the stadium was totally within Merton instead of partly within Wandsworth.

Yes, the stadium's in Merton rather than Wandsworth as its London Borough ... but only because when the London Boroughs were drawn up in 1965, the boundary between the two included the northern edge of the stadium site to keep it totally within Merton instead of partly within Wandsworth !! I'm sure I've seen it reported (probably in the Racing Post) that the historical deeds of the stadium mention that it does straddle the two local authorities that existed when it was built because this quirk has been mentioned as another obstacle towards redeveloping the site. Certainly, anyone living a few minutes' walk north of the stadium is comfortably within LB-Wandsworth ... it's also the case that Wandsworth was well known as a town centre in that part of London before it was picked as one of the 32 names for the London Boroughs whereas "Merton" was a bit of a botch-job for the next-door borough as Merton Park is a small district compared to the sizeable towns of Wimbledon, Tooting, Morden and Mitcham that are all within that borough (neither Wimbledon nor Mitcham would back down over the borough being named after each other, hence the Merton compromise). Given all the above info, I can understand the squash club marketing themselves as being in Wandsworth even if they're offically in Merton.

Dear oh dear !! ... a perfect example of how to get far too unnecessarily tetchy on a forum !! If you lift a newspaper's article into your post, the only way anyone can quote from that article in subsequent posts is by quoting it on your behalf (and using the general guidelines of this forum, I didn't want to waste bandwidth quoting the whole of the SLP report when I was only referring to its sentence about Boris Johnson's strategic planning for dog racing) ... you chose to lift that article onto this forum, so you shouldn't be surprised if your name then gets attached to it being quoted afterwards !! But actually, you've kept digging a bigger hole by praising the reputation of the SLP even after "25yearfan" as well as myself have pointed out the SLP's talking absolute rubbish if it reckons Boris Johnson has a strategic plan for greyhound racing ... so far any such strategic plan from the Mayor hasn't actually benefitted greyhound racing and in our different ways, "25yearfan" as well as myself have seized on the two examples of Catford & Walthamstow to prove it. Although I don't live in the area any more, I grew up just a few miles away from Plough Lane, supported Wimbledon FC at Plough Lane in all four divisions of the Football League, regularly attended Wimbledon greyhounds and so I'm well aware of where the South London Press fits into that area's media (just like any local paper, it can be a good voice for local campaigns but it'll often ignorantly throw in sentences that are clearly wrong like the one linking Boris Johnson with strategic planning for greyhound racing). I was also at the same school (but a year below) as the Racing Post's long-standing Wimbledon greyhound correspondent Richard Birch and still have some friends and contacts linked to that sport ... up until recently, I regarded Paschal Taggart's revamping plans for Wimbledon as a bit ambitious but still hoped they could be achieved (and I hope my previous comments on this thread reflect that view) as I'd love the Greyhound Derby to be staged at a venue worthy of its history rather than the current dump. However, after reading Mr Taggart's lavish plans for greyhound prize money in the Racing Post a few days ago (more than trebling the current total of prize money on offer at the track for routine nights, never mind even grander plans for special nights), I'm now of the opinion that his proposals are much more about headline-grabbing on the back of his Irish reputation rather than a really well thought-out way of giving London a 21st-century greyhound stadium ... he seems to think whatever worked in Dublin at Shelbourne Park over a decade ago is bound to work as well in London at Wimbledon when there are huge economic and geographical differences involved (as I've already explained on this forum). Yes, speedway still needs to piggy-back itself onto Mr Taggart's plans ahead of Merton Council's deliberations on 11th September because it's the only realistic way of getting the Wimbledon Dons back on track at that site ... however, I'm less optimistic than ever about Mr Taggart overcoming plenty of hurdles in his way just to have the chance to revamp the stadium, never mind where speedway fits into any of his plans.

That's all very nice to hear that the Mayor of London has a strategic plan for greyhound racing so let's check how useful his support's been elsewhere. Catford (like Wimbledon, part of the Greyhound Racing Association tracks owned by Risk/Galliard) was closed down without any notice or farewell meeting in November 2003 ... the site (in between the two railway lines on the western edge of Catford town centre) didn't come close to being redeveloped for over 9 years until the go-ahead was given in May this year for 589 homes to be built on it in a £117-million project ... the best hope for the dogs is that one or two of the streets might be named with a 4-legged theme. Walthamstow (owned by generations of the Chandler family steeped in betting-related businesses) was closed with 3 months' notice rounded off by a farewell meeting in August 2008 after the Chandlers chose to sell the site to developers London & Quadrant just before the financial crisis ruined L-&-Q's redevelopment viability ... the greyhound industry along with both the most local Conservative MP (Iain Duncan Smith) and most local Labour MP (Stella Creasy) kept campaigning for L-&-Q to cut their losses by offering new bidders the chance to restore dog racing to the track ... instead, Boris Johnson gave the go-ahead last October to Waltham Council's deal with L-&-Q to do a £50-million project comprising 294 homes, a community-run sports centre, allotments and a children's nursery ... try fitting a new dog track around that lot !! Good luck to anyone wanting to keep greyhounds or restore speedway at Wimbledon when it comes to strategic planning by the Mayor of London.

Thanks for clarifying that I'm more likely to have been thinking about Steve Ribbons than Ian Perkin in terms of any awkwardness a decade ago. In that case, good luck to Mr Perkin and the rest of the Dons supporters but I still fear it's going to be a long-drawn-out process especially after Risk/Gaillard announced short-to-medium-term operations-leases a few weeks ago with all 4 of their dog tracks (reckoned to be 5-years at Wimbledon and 15-years at each of Belle Vue, Perry Barr & Hall Green) which has been interpreted as an extra barrier to anyone trying to revamp any of those sites,

Paschal Taggart's plans for revamping the whole site are clearly speedway's best hope of returning to Wimbledon but I'd warn everyone to bear in mind he had so much more in his favour when he was the leading Irish greyhound administrator playing a major role in the brilliant redevelopment of Shelbourne Park in Dublin at the turn of the century. The Irish government has a much stronger affinity with greyhound racing than our government over here (the Irish President often presents the trophy at their Greyhound Derby final) and the Shelbourne development was completed as an early part of the Irish building boom that spectacularly went bust a few years later. What's more, Shelbourne's only a few minutes' walk from Dublin's smaller version of the London Docklands modernisation and just a couple of miles from the city centre, making it much more accessible for anyone wanting a lively night out ... compare that with Plough Lane being a few minutes' walk from nowhere special and several miles from the centre of London. You can easily see what's happened at Shelbourne by putting "South Lotts Road, Dublin" into a google-map search ... the home straight and grandstand are on the north side of the site while the smart flats that funded the greyhound revamp were built in an L-shape around the 1st & 2nd bends. Paschal Taggart's an ideal figurehead for greyhound fans hoping for the desperately needed improvement of London's last surviving track but it's still a long shot that he can persuade Risk Capital / Gaillard Homes to sell the site at a fair price, never mind actually deliver the revamp. Meanwhile, with Ian Perkin's name so prominent in the attempt by speedway to get its foot in the door with Mr Taggart, didn't the BSPA take a major dislike to Mr Perkin (or was that Steve Ribbons they couldn't stand?) during the Dons' years in the Conference League ... I can't help wondering that even if Mr Taggart successfully revamps the stadium, would the speedway authorities welcome a revival of the Wimbledon Dons so heavily associated with Mr Perkin ?

As I understand it, Manchester City Council has agreed to lend the speedway club (maybe to be more precise, its operational team at the new stadium) the bulk of the money needed to build the stadium ... this money, probably about 90-percent of the total bill, is then to be repaid back by the speedway folk on the terms of a 60-year-loan. But that still leaves a few percent to be directly funded by Belle Vue, maybe about £500,000 ... is drumming that money together proving to be a stumbling point ? You can have the best building company in the world primed up and ready to build the stadium but there's no way such a company will consider starting such a project until all the finance is clearly in place, especially since the 2008 credit crunch that led to various multi-million pound projects being left unfinished. Some other significant questions ... 1) Is there even a date fixed yet for the planning permission hearing ? ... so that any building company has some idea when they're going to get the go-ahead and can therefore start advising their contractors or special equipment to be available soon after that go-ahead date. 2) Given it's already late-July with no planning permission granted yet, it would be remarkable if the whole stadium was ready for the start of next season in 8 months' time (Redcar's much simpler design took about 6 months to complete and only got its safety certificate a few hours before its opening night in April 2006) so is there an initial contingency plan to just build the track and some basic spectator areas in the limited time that's going to be available ? ... the stadium wouldn't then be fully finished until the 2015 season but this would at least give it some use in 2014. I've already said on this forum that while I welcome the creation of a national speedway stadium (especially one that's going to be next door to a long-established home of speedway in as big a city as Manchester), I wouldn't let the current ham-fisted Belle Vue regime anywhere near the running of it ... given the on-going delay even securing what's supposed to be rubber-stamped planning permission, I don't expect any meeting to be staged at this new site in 2014 and I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't ready until well into the 2015 season.

Very fair point to accept people at Poole couldn't afford 2 meetings a week when both the Elite & National Leagues were being run at Wimborne Road ... in fact, it's not just the money aspect of 2 meetings a week that people can't afford because too many of them probably found it harder than they expected to spare the time to attend twice a week. Edinburgh/Armadale, Newcastle (both Premier & Conference 2002-03-04), Newport (several seasons), Stoke (when they were still in the Premier as well as the Conference), Sheffield and Swindon (remember, the Sprockets existed about a decade ago) all found it was really easy for supporters to be enthusiastic in advance about all the extra speedway that was going to be on offer to them. But plenty of that enthusiasm didn't translate into supporters actually turning up, especially for the Conference/National action in dodgier weather, hence proving what any crowd-pulling sports team should remember about being realistic that their crowd will always look forward to next time instead of starting to feel it's a bit of a chore going to watch yet another meeting in too busy a schedule.

The single biggest difference between most young Danes and most young Brits is that the Danes understand much better about learning to organise yourself really well off-track so that it benefits yourself on-track ... It's probably a general difference in attitude between any young Danes and any young Brits about being well organised (not just speedway riders). Because there's now a steady stream of young Danes making progress over here, each generation also seems much better at passing on their experiences to the next generation. What's more, the Danes have a far better balance between enjoying success on their way up the ladder but still regarding it as just a stepping stone towards their ultimate target which they know is going to be tougher than anything they're currently achieving ... meanwhile, too many young National League riders over here win a few races at that level, get carried away on the tiny bit of star-status that gives them and then can't cope with scratching around for points in the Premier League, never mind anything beyond that. Hence why many clubs go down the route of signing young Danes (or other imports) rather than cultivating British talent ... it's partly because those taking the decisions at those clubs are totally fed up at too many young Brits wasting the help that's offered to them.

Given the difference between Premier League & National League costs in terms of points money, travel expenses (there are currently 6 PL teams much further north than anywhere Kent visit in the NL) and signing-on fees, you'd probably need to be confident of attracting around an extra 300 fans to every home meeting despite bumping up the admission prices (or an extra £50,000 a year in sponsorship) to even start thinking about moving up to the PL. It's easy to think you can achieve those extra targets ... much, much harder to actually do them successfully. You'll find plenty of fans (and companies) along the way who talk enthusiastically about supporting a move up but drift away remarkably quickly when it doesn't quite turn out as they'd hoped, leaving those in charge still facing all the increased costs without as much revenue as they reckoned had been promised. Kent Kings will benefit much better from a year or two more becoming more successful in the NL while building awareness in the local area of their existence before tackling anything more ambitious ... look at how carefully Dudley have been building themselves in the NL without rushing up to the PL despite starting with a fanbase already existing from the fabled history of the Heathens at Cradley Heath and the ability to have a normal weekday start-time at Wolverhampton each Tuesday. By the way, if one of the biggest reasons for moving up to the PL is that it's the only way to keep Steve Boxall in the side, then you're much better off staying in the NL and letting him nosedive again elsewhere in the PL ... he's undoubtedly one of the greatest examples this country's ever had of a rider who's great when he's at the top-end of the riders he's racing against (or his confidence is high) but who tails off dreadfully when he's faced with tougher opposition (or his confidence takes the very slightest of dents). I wouldn't get too excited either about him top-scoring for the visitors in last night's John Berry Memorial at Ipswich because a quick look at the scorecard shows 7 of his 9 points came from beating 5 reserves, 1 retirement and 1 absent rider (caused by using rules from John Berry's era) so he beat just 2 finishers from the main body of the home side (Leigh Lanham in heat-4 & Alex Davies in heat-6) ... then in the individual races that rounded off the meeting, he didn't appear in his qualifying heat because the updater noted "No Boxall Bike Nackered".

Plenty of reasons (most of them daft) why most promoters won't embrace this forum. To be fair to promoters (and riders), sometimes when they've have made the effort to explain anything here, the less constructive posters have swiftly put them off making any further effort by immediately trying to dredge up any past grievances rather than giving the promoters (or riders) a bit of time and confidence to explain even more. But that's about their only worthwhile excuse for not taking some notice of what's written on here ... instead, too many of them can't be bothered to delve a tiny bit into understanding how internet forums work in any subject (not just sport) and so they quickly end up dismissing everyone on here as a negative keyboard warrior. Those promoters won't go anywhere near admitting it but some of the grumbles and frustrations that get discussed here (guests, rider replacement, weather-affected meetings) were being discussed on speedway terraces up and down the land many years before the internet even existed !! It's just that in those days, most chat like that was with the fans of your own club (with just a little bit added to it from away fans, or if you had a chat with home fans when you made any away trips) and the promoters didn't hear much of it so therefore could remain blissfully unaware about the extent to which it was going on. Now there are much more convenient and quicker methods like this forum (or facebook) for supporters of different clubs to have the same discussion all at once ... also, the topics they're discussing remain in the public domain instead of ending as soon as everyone left the stadium in their different homeward directions at the end of a meeting. It all adds up to another case of those in charge of the sport appearing dreadful at not keeping up with the ways that most other aspects of the sport have been using technology to help their involvement. Take last year's original version of the Premier League Riders' Championship at Sheffield where during what proved to be the terminal rain delay for that evening, at least 2 experienced club officials totally ignored the usual rule about mobiles being banned in the pits so that they could check different weather websites for useful rainfall radar information (at this stage, only 5 heats had been run so 7 more were needed to reach the minimum 12-heats necessary for declaring a champion). Meanwhile those in charge of the meeting appeared to be no better informed than simply hoping the rain would clear for long enough to mop up and carry on !! ... the farce ended when someone in charge clearly did give the riders the nod that it was going to be abandoned but didn't co-ordinate that info round the rest of the stadium. Therefore, virtually everything in the pits was packed up into the vans before anyone got round to telling the crowd it was officially off !! ... of course, by the time that announcement was made, any of the crowd paying any attention to the packing-up in the pits had every right to wonder why the hell they hadn't been told the same info as the riders at near-enough the same time.

Two simple tweaks of what's currently happening which I reckon are worth considering ... Firstly, most supporters can tolerate reasonable delays for medical matters but they don't like waiting around when the delay's less obvious and a prime case of that is when the referee agrees to give "extra time for a rider in 2 races in a row" without anyone knowing exactly how much extra time that means. Simple solution ... as soon as it's clear there's a "2 in a row" situation, the referee declares "4 minutes" instead of "2 minutes" (maybe with a different-sounding klaxon, buzzer or bell) and then there's no argument about how much extra time is being given ... reminders at 2-minutes, 1-minute and 30-seconds can still be announced as usual. Whether "4 minutes" could also be used for the re-run of a heat that's just had a pile-up wrecking a fair bit of machinery is more debatable but that's another situation where delays can start feeling as if they're delays just for the sake of it. Second tweak involves removing the need for the wretched tactical ride (or tactical substitute or anything else that rewards earlier mediocrity) by adding two extra levels to the existing levels of league-points. Remember, at the moment, it's as follows ... Home - 3 league points if winning by 7 or more, 2 league points for a smaller win, 1 league point for a draw Away - 4 league points if winning by 7 or more, 3 league points for a smaller win, 2 league points for a draw, 1 league point for losing by 6 or less If you get rid of tactical rides, you're back to a basic 90-points up for grabs over 15 heats (unless there are any heats with 2 or fewer finishers) instead of anything between 90 & 96 currently ending up on the scoreboard ... now, consider the following structure for league points with no tactical rides allowed ... Home - 5 league points for winning by 17 or more, 4 league points if winning by 9-to-16, 3 league points for a smaller win, 2 league points for a draw, 1 league point for losing by 8 or less, nothing for a heavier defeat Away - 6 league points for winning by 17 or more, 5 league points if winning by 9-to-16, 4 league points for a smaller win, 3 league points for a draw, 2 league points for losing by 8 or less, 1 league point for losing by 9-to-16, nothing for a heavier defeat Have a think about what you reckon are the plus-points and minus-points of that system ...essentially, it's turning the current 4 levels of the league-points into a 6-level system and while some supporters still prefer the bonus-point aggregate, I'd reckon a majority prefer the 4-level system now that they've had a few years to get used to it and so it shouldn't be too big a leap to get used to the 6-level system. Clearly it adds some extra columns to a league table if you're going to show all the columns for the various margins (sorry about that Manchester Paul whose tables can be very useful for detailed analysis) but arguably, it's easier for the media to simply print one column each for wins, draws and losses followed by a points-column that can't be immediately calculated from the earlier columns (already happens in much of rugby union and lower levels of rugby league). Barring chaotic scenes in any heat, it makes 54-points in a meeting the normal target for either side claiming maximum league points (probably meaning more incentive for a comfortably-winning home side to field their top riders in heat 15) while setting struggling away teams a normal target of 37-points to achieve any league points at all ... frankly, if you can't cobble together 37 in an away meeting (or 41 at home), you don't deserve anything. It also keeps more teams in the play-off hunt with a few meetings to go because they've still got a chance to zoom up the table with a 5-league-points home-win or 6-league-points away-win. Best of all it's goodbye to speedway's most ludicrous rule, namely the tactical ride that rewards a team with double the race-points for something that rider was going to be doing anyway ... yes, there's the occasional worthwhile fuss when a home reserve beats an away tactical number-1 (Paul Starke on his Berwick debut beating Leicester's Kauko Nieminen being a prime example this season) but that's not enough to make up for all the artificial results created by tactical rides or the general disbelief of newcomers that it's sometimes well worth a team doing badly in one race so they can rattle up double-points from their superstar in the next race. Thanks for reading all of this ... what do you think ?

The athletics at the "other Perry Barr" features plenty of well-known names off free-to-air television so that gives it a big head-start compared to speedway for attracting a big crowd paying big money. It's a bit tricky trying to compare athletics with speedway for crowds/revenue because there are relatively few major athletics meetings each year around the whole country compared to each of the Elite, Premier and National League clubs staging a full schedule of home meetings. Speedway relies much more on people attending plenty of meetings at the same place each year ... athletics is aiming for more folk looking for one or two good days out each year.

I don't reckon as basic a statement as "British speedway is effectively finished" is correct ... providing it adopts a realistic economic attitude to its current plight, it can give itself a chance to settle down before trying to build itself back up (the biggest worry in all of that is whether enough clubs or supporters are patient enough to accept that's going to take some time to achieve). However, I'm certain the current format of British speedway is effectively finished ... in fact, given plenty of clubs in both the Elite and Premier leagues have been losing hefty sums of money for at least the last 3 seasons, it's been effectively finished for some time but it's been allowed to stagger towards even greater decline because too many of the people in charge clung onto the lovely hope of "it must get better eventually" and spent far too long bickering over relatively trivial matters within the sport while the juggernaut of the general economic downturn hurtled towards them. The Premier League collectively have made a huge effort this year towards keeping their costs under better control ... there's still a long way to go but at least the momentum's now in place to avoid carelessly letting costs spiral out of control again. There's been plenty of debate on this forum in recent years (from their own fans and on a wider basis) about whether Ipswich were right or wrong to choose to drop down from being a 2010 Elite team into being a 2011 Premier team ... from what I've seen, that decision has turned out to be exactly the kind of realistic economic thinking I'd recommend for the whole sport. I can understand Shale Shaker's concern about where new fans are going to come from but given the current situation, I'd argue too many aspects of British speedway aren't ready yet to make the most of new fans and hang onto them ... hence, maybe it's better to get the current mess sorted out first so that any future push towards attracting those new fans has the best possible chance of succeeding. - - - - - - - - - - - - Meanwhile, although I've been very critical sometimes on this forum regarding Philip Rising's posts, I'll willingly applaud him for his post on this thread early this morning summing up the article he's written on his concerns about the current situation. It looks like he's adopting a totally realistic and accurate view about just how much damage has been done already on top of previous damage which makes it so much harder to unravel everything now.

In an ideal world, of course we'd love British speedway to aspire to GP-levels ... but given how long-drawn-out it's proving to build just one shiny new international stadium in this country (the new Belle Vue down the road from the current one), how long's it going to take to build smart-enough venues to match your aspirations for every Elite club over here ? Remember, the new Belle Vue relies on the local council stumping up the majority of the funding to build it which the Aces will then repay as a 60-year loan. Think about the new venues which have been completed in this country in the last 15 years ... all of Somerset, Scunthorpe, Redcar, Plymouth and Leicester have been built in fairly basic fashion to begin with (while also leaving room for further facilities to be added) because no-one's been anywhere close towards wanting to risk a bolder initial development. Somerset's fine clubhouse that can bring in extra revenue from social gatherings is probably the best item that's been added later to any of those new venues but I suspect all 5 of them aren't keeping up with the pace of developments their respective original architects had in mind. Other sports in this country are littered with plush venues that are surplus to realistic requirements ... look at how little use London''s Olympic Stadium will get before West Ham finally move in about 4 years after the Olympics themselves ... Durham cricket has already handed back for re-location some of the less money-spinning internationals it's been granted ... and don't go near any Coventry or Wolves football fans to tell them about aspirational new or expanded venues as those sides prepare to meet each other in a few months in their sport's third level. The only realistic long-term route for British speedway is to accept its current place in the world pecking-order well beneath the GP-glitz and try to gradually climb up towards that shiny target ... good luck finding the money, administrative talent and public enthusiasm for any much quicker fix after many years of sliding towards shoddiness.

On current ability/form, only any riders who would be much better than the standard of current PL number-1's would need to fear being "surplus" in relation to their scoring power if there's a merging of the Elite & Premier Leagues to fit into a "£10 model" ... whether they'd feel "surplus" because they'd reckon they wouldn't be paid enough within a "£10 model" is a different matter depending on how those potential "£10 model" earnings would compare to their Polish or Swedish wages. Given the scores that riders like Edward Kennett, Simon Stead (get well soon Simon) and Ben Barker have been getting in recent weeks as PL number-1's, I don't see riders like Danny King and Lewis Bridger being far too strong for the Premier League if they were currently riding for any of those teams while I'd be surprised if Robert Mear even claimed the number-1 racejacket at that level. So among British riders, that probably leaves just Tai Woffinden, Chris Harris and Scott Nicholls even reaching any discussion of "would they be far too strong ?". From what I've seen in 2013, my answers would be that only Woffinden would be too strong by a wide margin with Harris being a bit too strong and Nicholls right on the borderline ... however, given the stage he's at in his career, Nicholls might well dip below that borderline by the time any merger took effect. It's also worth noting that in Sweden (where the Elit and the Allsvenskan are by far the closest equivalents to our Elite and Premier), as high profile a GP-rider as Andreas Jonsson was in Rospiggarna's title-chasing squad last year in the Allsvenskan enabling that club to decide each Thursday whether they wanted a top-heavy lineup that included him or a strength-in-depth lineup that gave him the night off ... if he could still take part in his homeland's second level, it ought not to be too hard to accommodate just one or two British superstars in any team-building rules over here. While wanting to encourage new fans (or lapsed fans back into the sport), I also think a "£10 model" is a bit too cheap a route to be sketching out for the future of the sport regardless of how neat and tidy a figure it looks ... I'd reckon a "£12 model" would be more appropriate if you're realistically going to find the balance between a fair price for the fans and a fair wage for the risks the riders are taking.