arthur cross

Even allowing for a speedway-tinted view from a speedway fan, you've come up with an absolutely staggering misjudgment of the revenue balance between greyhound racing and speedway meetings at Perry Barr ... I've quoted one post from you when I could have also quoted several subsequent ones that have betrayed your total ignorance of the situation. Perry Barr's BAGS greyhound meetings every Sunday lunchtime & Tuesday lunchtime bring in at least £6,000 per meeting in betting-shop picture-fees, perhaps even as much as £8,000 per meeting ... what's more, with only the very occasional bad-weather abandonment in mid-winter, those fees are coming in all 52-weeks of the year so that's at least £600,000 to £800,000 per year into Perry Barr's coffers without a single person needing to stroll through the turnstiles. The GRA are notoriously poor prize-money payers so they're only spending about £2,000 of each BAGS-meeting's picture-fees on the prize-money for those races ... the rest comfortably funds the day-to-day upkeep of the stadium & the wages of the few full-time staff with the bonus of the Sunday meetings attracting a modest number of spectators for a bit of extra profit from any food, drink or tote-bets they enjoy. All of which means the evening greyhound meetings only need to attract enough of a crowd to cover each night's prize-money and the extra costs of the part-time staff needed for the extra demand for food, drink and tote-service and that's where greyhound racing has accepted in recent years that the public will only tend to turn out in profitable numbers for that business plan on Thurs-Fri-Sat nights, hence the reduction of midweek nights of greyhound racing across the country. It's not what you suggest as a "whittling down" of the number of nights of racing ... it's actually an economic common-sense move by the dog tracks to concentrate their efforts into marketing and running their meetings on the nights their customers actually want to come and enjoy them. Now let's have a look at what speedway generates at Perry Barr ... the rent's around £2,000 per meeting (if it gets paid) but that's only once-a-week and only for 7-months per year and, even then, it's weather-dependent so it's effectively only 6-months per year ... meanwhile, speedway attracts a crowd that mostly like to stay outside while buying only the occasional burger or drink instead of the dog-racing crowd mostly staying inside guzzling far more food and booze throughout the evening plus having plenty of tote-bets on their night's action on the track. In other words, for the finances at Perry Barr, a night's speedway is somewhere between the handy bonus of any Sunday-lunchtime crowd-expenditure topping up that day's BAGS-fee and the standard profitability of a weekend night's dog-racing so without knowing the exact figures, I'd put it a bit nearer the "Sunday" end of this equation than the "standard" end. There is absolutely no way that, in your words, " ... the GRA probably needs the Brummies now, more than they did 7-8 years ago ... ". In fact, please tell all of us from where (other than your own chronic ignorance) you've got that view of this situation. Instead, bear in mind the GRA's 21st-century record of how important speedway's been to them at Wimbledon and Oxford, leaving them with only one of their tracks (Belle Vue) currently hosting speedway and that's not going to be for much longer thanks to the Aces' new stadium rather than any GRA decision. Much though it's encouraging to see Tony Mole arranging efforts to revive the Brummies in 2015 and beyond, I've yet to see or hear a single word from either him or the GRA about where things stand regarding the Brummies' rent-debt left behind at Perry Barr by the Phillips-regime. Until that debt is tidied up to both the GRA's and speedway's satisfaction, any revival surely can't go forward. Anyone thinking the GRA are "hoping and praying" for speedway's return is living in a land even the cloud-cuckoos wouldn't dream of entering.

Almost certainly a very simple answer to all of this. The brief report outlining how busy the Comets would be in the next few days while still falling two fixtures short of completing their fixtures before the play-off cut-off fails to include any phrase along the lines of "... these will still be staged before the end of the season but won't have an impact on the play-off qualifiers". Perhaps that sort of phrase was included by whoever sent this report to the News & Star sportsdesk but got sub-edited out to make the report fit into the right space on the newspaper page (and wasn't then re-instated when the report was put online where there's far less pressure on how much space is taken up by any particular article). The headline, including the all-important word "scrapped", would only have been added by someone at the sportsdesk in Carlisle where it can't be guaranteed that whoever's on duty has a useful knowledge of speedway given the nearest team's 35 miles away. All it needs is for that headline-writer to see no hint in the article of the missing fixtures still being fitted in a few weeks later and, hey presto, the word "scrapped" is an obvious one to use within the headline ... and, also hey presto, you've got nearly 60 posts on this thread. But what remains daft is that no-one from several different angles has done anything to correct this misjudged website headline for more than 2 days !! ... all it would surely take is anyone connected with the News & Star with good speedway knowledge, or anyone officially connected with the Comets, or even a couple of Comets fans ringing up the News & Star sports desk to query the headline and get it changed to get rid of this confusion. Very few (if any) other sports have a habit of staging regular-season fixtures that don't count towards post-season qualifications ... the moral of this article (for any team or paper rather than just the Comets and the News & Star) is to make sure whoever supplies any fixture-update like this makes it abundantly clear about these meetings' unusual situation.

I'm pleased to see the planning permission hurdle has not only been cleared but, by all accounts, comprehensively sorted out which is a great achievement in the current planning climate for any speedway club whether it's new, old or moving along its local road. But given it's taken just over 3 years from the August 2011 Belle Vue fans forum to secure this planning permission when even the more cautious speakers that evening were hoping for permission in March 2012 and stadium-opening by the end of 2012, I'll still reserve my full congratulations until the stadium's successfully up-&-running. I hope the amount of facilities and spectator-capacity being built (or temporarily accounted for on big-event days) will generate enough money to keep on top of the 24-year city-council loan but the figurework still looks tough to me, hence my overall reservations despite today's big step forward. In one respect, today's news confirms perhaps the biggest challenge of all for Dave Gordon, Chris Morton and everyone else at Belle Vue involved in this project because (albeit much delayed) they've been able to obtain the planning-permission and building-loan plenty of other speedway projects elsewhere in the country have found so difficult to secure. Now they've got no-one else to blame if they can't go on to deliver a successful finished product.

Right rider, right track, right sequence of events and right colour of flag (although he ignored it the first time he went past it because he seemed blissfully unaware he'd done anything to deserve it, never mind both leaving/rejoining the track and being lapped !!). But given he was at least in his mid-30's at the time, it certainly wasn't during an under-21 qualifier !! ... probably he was riding in the Conference League half of a Buxton double-header that also featured a British under-21 semi-final or a round of the British under-15 series. Talking of which, also at Buxton during one of their British under-15 meetings. a very determined 12-or-13-year-old Josh Auty missed the gate but scythed into the lead on the 2nd-bend between two far less confident riders who were so scared out of their wits that they promptly wobbled into each other and then into a heap with at least one of them being excluded for being the primary cause of the stoppage when, arguably, the real cause of it was already well clear down the back-straight by the time anyone fell off !! But I'll give top marks to the time at Newport that referee Dave Watters excluded Mark Lemon from the re-run of a heat for failing the 2-minutes despite the fact the pair of them had been chatting on the pits-&-ref phones (about why the original version had been called back) for at least the first 40-seconds of the fresh 2-minutes without Mr. Watters ever telling Lemo the fresh clock had started !!

Err, umm ... they haven't done much work yet, regardless of what anyone was saying at Alf Weedon's funeral. This is what was reported in the Racing Post back in mid-April, clearly identifying sometime around now (rather than any time around that funeral) as the starting-point for any work and aiming for about a year from now for completion. http://www.racingpost.com/news/greyhounds/swindon-reveal-plans-to-build-new-stadium/1638343/

I can understand anyone aware of the Towcester greyhound project wondering if it could embrace speedway as well but in all the Racing Post coverage of the project over the past year there's never been any hint of any other sport also being involved and from a speedway perspective there would be a couple of particularly awkward problems. Firstly, the racecourse is less than a mile south-east of Towcester town centre which already has a population of around 9,000 as a still-expanding commuter town that's handy for both Milton Keynes and Northampton so it won't be the easiest place in which to secure noise-permission for speedway bikes. Secondly, if you already think it feels a bit remote watching speedway at somewhere like Monmore or Sheffield with a greyhound track separating you from the action then be prepared to feel very remote if speedway's ever tried at Towcester because (like Dundalk in Ireland) they're building the greyhound track inside the home straight of their horse racing track but still using the horse racing facilities for the crowd. It'll be distant enough for greyhound fans in the stands at Towcester with separate chase and hurdles home-straights for the horses separating themselves from the dog racing ... how many of you would want to watch speedway separated from the action by 3 widths of other sports' tracks ? !!

There were significant easy-to-spot drawbacks about a Fast Track scheme for the PL beyond any basic "bad for business" viewpoint. At the time the EL's scheme was being devised last November, it needed 20 riders to be drafted across the 10 EL teams and we've all seen what a wide range of abilities that proved to embrace ... at that same time, it would have needed 24 riders to be drafted across 12 PL teams with the consequently even wider stretching of abilities and, as it turned out, Peterborough's later inclusion as the PL's 13th team would have required a 25th and 26th drafted reserve at this level. But the biggest drawback was how far flung the 13 PL teams are across the British map compared to the much tighter-knit range of either EL or NL clubs ... don't forget, 6 PL clubs (Glas/Edin/Berw/Newc/Wkgtn/Redcar) are well north of the EL's northern outpost at Belle Vue and the NL's northern outpost at Scunthorpe. Drumming up a big enough list of suitable draftees for the EL was a tricky enough task ... now try drumming up a bigger number of suitable riders with the extra proviso of them being able (perhaps affected by other work commitments outside speedway) to guarantee devoting enough travel-time to reach whichever PL club drafted them despite most of these suitable being based inside or close beside the much tighter-knit NL map. Probably a 12-rider (or as it proved 13) for a PL draft for one reserve place in each side (with the other reserve place still fluctuating on the month-by-month averages around the other 6 riders in each team) would be as far as you could realistically attempt given the supply of riders set against the amount/location of teams ... but then, how do you rank the PL clubs fairly for just a single pick each compared to the EL's double-pick that had the more obvious parity-guideline of 1st pick-&-20th pick, 2nd-&-19th, 3rd-&-18th, etc alongside any clubs being able to protect their own eligible assets.

Scores up to and including the 23rd of the old month count towards the averages that will apply from the 1st of the new month ... the gap of the last week or so at the end of the month allows time for all the figurework to be done, ready to publish the new month's full set of averages around the 29th of the old month. Go to the speedwaygb website and probably by Friday (29th) in the declarations and greensheet chapter of the Premier League, you'll see the up-to-date issue of September's averages marked "effective from 01-09-14" ... once you open that file, it'll show each team's current 1-to-7 for the final days of using August's averages next to what their averages will be in September. All you have to do yourself is then work out where those September averages will alter any team's number-1 or their reserves.

Given they don't seem to have declared a number-8 rider, Workington began the night with their reserves needing to fill 10 spaces on the racecard between them ... their 4 scheduled rides each plus 2 of the rider-replacement slots. But with any single reserve only allowed a maximum of 7 rides (in this case, Simon Lambert), the other reserve has to remain responsible for the other 3 rides, regardless of what state he's in. So whether Luke Crang suffered a fresh injury in heat-2 (permitting him to be withdrawn from the meeting and a reserve to stand-in for his remaining rides) or aggravated an old one (requiring him to be a non-starter for his minimum-required 2nd and 3rd rides), Tony Jackson was left with the same dilemma as Comets team manager if Crang wasn't able to ride beyond heat-2. He could only give Lambert his maximum-allowed 7 rides and, as Crang had ridden only once, there would have to be two blanks on the scorecard because there was no other Comet eligible to fill those gaps. The textbook theory for a manager with that problem is to weigh up in which early races the opposition are at their strongest (as well as trying to avoid your busy reserve needing to take several rides in a row) and swiftly sacrifice those 2 blanks against those strengths to speed up getting your own team into tactical-ride territory ... bang goes that theory when the team needing to find those blanks is also rattling up a 22-7 lead !! By the way, even if Workington had declared a number-8 last night, there would probably have still been one blank on their scorecard because Lambert had already taken the opening r/r turn in heat-1 before Crang's exit ... as the number-8 is limited to just the remaining r/r slots, using him twice to avoid any blanks would have meant either Rene Bach or Mason Campton not getting their r/r turn from the main body of the team ... more likely, Bach and Campton would still have both been used with the knock-on effect of only one number-8 ride and, therefore, still one blank elsewhere while using up Lambert's maximum 7 rides. If you think what I've just explained was awkward for Jacko, spare a thought for Plymouth boss Lee Trigger at Newcastle two Sundays ago who started off with 6 riders plus r/r but racked up casualties galore ... when it came to heat 15 nominations, he was down to just 3 fit riders and 2 of those were his reserves who'd both burnt up their 7th ride by one of them being his only rider in heat-13 and the other one being his only rider in heat-14 ... hence Pepe Franc had to go it alone in heat-15 as the only Plymouth rider left who was both healthy and yet to run out of rides !!

Don't know where "sidney" has heard about West Ham United moving into Wembley ?? ... they're moving into the London 2012 Olympic Stadium in a couple of seasons' time !! Like Wembley, the Olympic Stadium doesn't have a roof over its playing area which is such a useful aspect for speedway's biggest capacities at both Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and Copenhagen's Parken Stadium. Yes, the athletics track will be staying at the Olympic Stadium but the lower deck of seating is going to be adapted so that for football matches it can be moved over the outside athletics lanes to bring the crowd closer to the football touchlines (a simple concept that was built superbly with big hydraulic jacks into the initial construction of the Stade de France in the mid-1990's, nearly a decade before London even won its Olympic bid, but why that wasn't copied by Seb Coe and his chums is another story entirely). As it's expensive enough to lay a temporary track of around 280-metres at either Cardiff or Copenhagen, I doubt BSI would want to also pay the cost of the extra materials needed to lay a temporary 400-metre track directly over the Olympic Stadium's athletics track so any attempt to stage speedway there would almost certainly be with another 280-metres track. In any case, especially after past shambles at Gothenburg's Ullevi Stadium with a Cardiff/Copenhagen capacity but no roof, BSI's policy seems to be very much based on only going through all the cost and upheaval of laying a big stadium temporary track if there's the luxury a roof to avoid all the hassles of a rain-off (and even that luxury almost wasn't enough at Cardiff last year !!)

Even those early-season 2014 crowd figures show that all 8 sides are still comfortably averaging over 1,500 with the prospect of any last-day regular-season qualifying-deciders and then the play-offs themselves boosting those figures a bit further. Back in our Elite League, how many teams are struggling to even break the 1,000 barrier ? !! Birmingham were certainly well short ... of the remaining 9, how many of Lakeside, Swindon, Eastbourne or Belle Vue are averaging 1,000 ? ... surely none of them are anywhere near Vargarna's current 1,681 !! Remember that's an average of 1,681 so you're probably looking at being guaranteed at least 1,300 turning up on a rain-threatened evening against low-key opposition while making the most of 2,000 enjoying a glorious evening against superstar visitors. I'd reckon that leaves only 5 of our Elite clubs in with a fair chance of drawing crowds to match the smallest Swedish-Elit average. Over to any Coventry, King's Lynn, Leicester, Poole or Wolves fans for your realistic assessments of where your club's current crowds would fit into those mid-season Swedish stats ... is your team at least matching Vargarna's 1,681 or, better still, within reach of that middle-order pack of Swedish clubs just above 2,500 ? By the way, Vargarna's admission prices are as follows (£1 = 11.7 Swedish kroner) so they're charging a little beneath our Elite prices rather than inflating their crowd-figures with dirt-cheap tickets ... adults 170 (£14.50) ... seniors 120 (£10.25) ... children up to 15-year-olds 50 (£4.25) ... under-12's free.

Robert Lambert's case for doubling-up/down is a freakish one because he didn't turn 16 (early-April) until this season was already underway and, therefore, can't fulfil the usual doubling-up/down requirement to have a calculated average (Elite or Premier) from the previous year simply because he wasn't old enough to ride in either of those leagues at any stage of the 2013 season !! Don't forget as well that neither of the last two British "teenage superstars" wanted to fill-up their 16-year-old schedules with double team-places because Lewis Bridger made a big thing of going straight to the Elite League at that age while Tai Woffinden happily settled for just a Premier place at Rye House ... fairly obvious by now which one of them made the right or wrong career-building decision there !! So in this era of much more common double team-places, there's no real previous example of what to do with someone as young as 16 who appears keen to take on double commitments (and is clearly talented enough to be a good attraction at Premier League tracks) with only his youthfulness causing a problem with the rulebook. The chances are that old chestnut "for the good of speedway" will be trotted out if a Premier club is able to fit Lambert into their 1-to-7 on an average reflecting what he's already achieving in the Elite League ... Newcastle's attempt to sign him back in May required not only that chestnut but also counting him as a 3-point newcomer at Premier level when he was already in the main body of an Elite team !! As for future team changes ,,, Ty Proctor's average becomes 6.40 for the rest of July from tomorrow onwards (a week after his 4th qualifying home meeting covering both his short Plymouth-2013 spell before injury as well as his current time at Sheffield) so he's still listed at 9.22 for tonight's rearranged trip to Scunthorpe. Once he's officially 6.40 that leaves Sheffield 3.06 under the 42.50 limit, so their available points for dropping any of the current side (3.06 plus each rider's July average) would be 10.13 for Leigh Lanham ... 8.18 for Andre Compton ... 6.87 for Simon Nielsen ... 6.81 for Taylor Poole ... and 6.64 for Josh Bates. Meanwhile (just briefly as this is Sheffield's thread but it's already been mentioned above), over at Newcastle, all of Stuart Robson, Ludvig Lindgren and Lewis Kerr have increased their averages since Danny King was squeezed-in on his 11.18 converted-average in mid-May so the whole Diamonds lineup now totals 44.77 and that means even a proper Premier average of only 8.91 for King after next Thursday's trip to Sheffield (his 4th qualifying away meeting) would still put the Diamonds on the total limit of 42.50, thus preventing any strengthening elsewhere in their lineup despite the change in King's status.

All credit to the Monarchs for staying unbeaten this long but I've reckoned for a while (without it being mentioned much elsewhere) that the controversial postponement at Peterborough in early-May did this remarkable run a big favour at the time ... and the re-staging on Sun-20-July will almost certainly be the toughest threat to it judging by Peterborough's recent results. And while I fully understand the reason for Paulco starting this thread to compare 2014-Edinburgh with 1991-Arena Essex, I think I might take the astonishingly strong-in-depth 2004-Hull lineup against either of them !! ... towards the end of that season (admittedly with bonus points included at that time), all those Vikings were listed with 6-point averages or better !!

I'd agree you're not "unique" in this situation but you're certainly a rarity.

And that makes you and your pals a very welcome and enthusiastic exception to the general rule. As you're one of the busiest posters on this forum, from all your time browsing the various threads could you easily name many other forum members who so clearly have identified themselves as any particular speedway club's fans despite being local arch-rival supporters in another sport ?

Yes, Leicester's among the best-attended tracks in the country but their whole business plan was based on significantly higher attendances that they've now settled into so that the gate-receipts didn't just cover the week-to-week costs of the Lions but also made good progress paying off the lump-sun costs of building the stadium in the first place. If you go to, for example Poole or Wolves, a small part of your admission money's going towards the rent of a stadium whose building costs were paid off many years ago ... but at Leicester, a bigger chunk of your admission money's still going towards the materials and other costs of building the venue you're standing in and that's why an above-average crowd for them isn't automatically making them "doing better" as you've suggested. And if you think Derby's proximity to Nottingham will significantly help the prospects of a Nottingham speedway team attracting a worthwhile crowd, dream on given those two cities' football rivalry !! One of Long Eaton's biggest advantages was its location midway between Derby and Nottingham without fully being either one of them so that whatever your football or other sports loyalties, there wasn't any need to feel awkward by saying you also supported the speedway at Long Eaton.

And, even if the Corden family could be persuaded to change their mind, where exactly are you going to find any "prospective speedway promoter" prepared to stump up at least £150,000 just to alter Nottingham's centre-green into a speedway track, never mind also having enough finance in place to get a team up and running in a city that's gone 20 years without any team within 10 miles of it and, therefore, has no great speedway heritage whatsoever ? !! In case you haven't noticed, two other Midlands cities that did at least have a speedway heritage have had their clubs revived in the past few years ... one of them (Birmingham) is now on its financial knees and the other (Leicester) isn't bringing in anything like the anticipated long-term gate receipts from either its design-stage or its earliest attendances. So all you've got to overcome to make your fortune out of Nottingham Speedway is the landlord's indifference, the city's lack of speedway heritage and the region's difficulty in sustaining new speedway ventures. Still interested in risking those £150,000 building costs plus the team's start-up costs despite all those obstacles I've just mentioned !!

But was he officially declared in Plymouth's 1-to-7 for that short spell with them last season or simply making a few guest appearances ? Even if he was in that Plymouth 1-to-7, I'm not sure such a short spell from one season can then be included in the next season's qualification at a different club for a PL-only average ... if he was just guesting at Plymouth then his scores in those meetings won't count at all towards any average calculations as scores while guesting are never included in any rider's average.

Surely not even the fresh averages for July are going to get Ty Proctor off his 9.22 calculated average from the Elite League because he's only ridden 2 Sheffield home meetings (instead of the required 4 for a PL-only average) before Monday's cut-off date (the 23rd of the previous month) for those July averages to be calculated and published. The Scunthorpe (May 15th) and Glasgow League meetings are the only Owlerton average-counters that he's ridden in because he was busy with Wolves for the Scunthorpe (June 12th) League meeting. Last Thursday was the 2nd leg of the League Cup semi-final against Edinburgh and only the group meetings of that competition are average-counters (on the basis they're the only meetings in that competition that every team's going to have) so Proctor didn't tick off his 3rd home meeting there ! What's more, he still won't tick off number-3 this Thursday in the much-delayed KO-Cup tie with Berwick as none of that competition's meetings are average-counters either ! So, by my reckoning, even if the weather behaves itself, his PL-only average won't emerge until after he's ridden at home to both Rye House (July 3rd) and Newcastle (July 17th) as there's no home meeting on July 10th. Newcastle are in a similar situation with a lack of away meetings meaning Danny King's 11+ PL-average converted from an EL-figure also can't become a PL-only average until mid-July even though he joined them in the same week Proctor eventually joined Sheffield ... in fact, Proctor and King could well both finally pick up their PL-only averages as soon as they've finished racing against each other in that July 17th encounter.

The big problem for speedway (from the noisy engines angle) is that even Paschal Taggart's plan involves around 400-to-450 flats being built on part of the Wimbledon Stadium site to help fund his revamping of the greyhound track as a repeat of the apartments he included to help fund his revamp of Dublin's premier dog track at Shelbourne Park a decade ago. Hence speedway has never been a high priority in his Wimbledon plans regardless of any enquiries that might have come from either the BSPA or past promotions of the Dons ... it would take speedway to prove its revenue-stream would be worth sacrificing most or all of those flats to get it any further up the priority-list and that's pretty much impossible. I haven't seen speedway mentioned at all in the past few months even when other non-greyhound activities have been mentioned like making sure the number of existing squash courts and the fitness club are part of this overall revamp. But at least the Taggart project clearly keeps the sporting floorspace on the site in an oval shape that would be big enough to allow any possible future permanent installation of a speedway or stock-car track if noise regulations were to change in motorsport's favour. The rival Galliard & AFC Wimbledon plan involves 650 flats on the site with the room for those extra flats created by having a much smaller rectangular sporting floorspace that would only be big enough for a football pitch with all the stands close into the touchlines and goal-lines. That would leave the costly temporary installation of any motorsport track as the only option if the football stadium's built and, even then, the proximity of the seats to the pitch compared to somewhere like Cardiff-Millennium or Copenhagen-Parken would result in much smaller lap-lengths than at either of those SGP-venues, probably restricting the lap-length beneath the minimum allowed for FIM-events. With the exception of the few Conference League years in the early-2000's and any challenge-match revivals either side of that, there hasn't been a Wimbledon speedway team competing week-in week-out for over 20 years so the distinguished earlier history of speedway's Dons means little to younger generations in that area. But since Wimbledon FC left their ground at the other end of Plough Lane in the summer of 1991, there's always been either Wimbledon FC playing a few miles away at Selhurst Park or AFC Wimbledon building up again from non-league levels once the Football League controversially allowed the Selhurst-based team to switch to becoming the MK Dons at Milton Keynes so the concept of a Wimbledon-named football team has far more recent continuity than speedway can muster. And there's also some desire within Merton Council to bring AFC Wimbledon back into the borough as a way of righting the shoddy way that council treated Wimbledon FC's efforts to find a new site in the borough in the early/mid-1980's when it was clear that football team's results were outgrowing its home ground even before the regulations after the Bradford fire and Hillsborough crush totally ruled out any worthwhile revamp of football's Plough Lane.

Tai did little that was completely new last night with all his gate-gardening ... all he did was keep testing how far the referee would let him go with his various antics only to keep finding out it appeared he could do whatever he wanted, not least because Sky seemed perfectly happy to be showing such daft scenes even if it meant their coverage overran even further. Several years ago at Owlerton when Pepe Franc (always a prolific gate-gardener given the chance) was riding for Sheffield against a Glasgow side managed for the evening by their centre-green announcer at the time Michael Max, Pepe cheerfully moved several lumps of the startline fence's dirt into gate-3. That prompted Michael to stroll from the 4th-bend pits to within a few feet of Pepe (still busy dirt-shifting) while furiously gesturing along the lines of "come on ref, that's surely not allowed !!". Given the respective sizes of the two of them, it was an absolutely hilarious Little and Large show and, as far as I'm aware, the ref on that occasion didn't do anything either.

A very good solution by British Eurosport to their dilemma although if they've always had this in mind, it's a surprise it wasn't ready to announce during the previous Grand Prix. But still a reminder to speedway of where it fits into the tv-sports pecking-order.

So am I ... but I'm equally 100% certain that what you've just stated won't have had much impact upon the decision-makers at Eurosport Towers where, remember, they're not a broadcaster at risk of losing viewers' subscription-money in a situation like this because there isn't any viewers' subscription income in the first place !! The sponsorship and advertising income from either the show jumping or the speedway has almost certainly been a far greater factor in creating the current situation ... and whether we as speedway fans like it or not, over at Eurosport Towers they've clearly reached the conclusion at the moment that they prefer the income they'll be generating from the whole of the show jumping they'll be showing on Saturday rather than from the whole of the speedway they could have shown instead. Commercial broadcasting isn't just about the sheer number of viewers watching any particular coverage although that's as basic a benchmark as the majority of the public can understand ... it's also increasingly about the commercial attractiveness of the different types of viewers that different coverage brings on board. How many of Channel-4 Racing's viewers are ever likely to go to Dubai, especially the £2-punters in your local bookies' shop ? !! ... it's bound to be a tiny proportion but Dubai still gets tremendous value out of its blanket-sponsorship of that coverage, firstly because it wants to be seen to be supportive of a British industry it likes and secondly because the tiny proportion of Channel 4 viewers who are tempted to visit Dubai via such tv-sponsorship are each likely to spend shedloads when they get to such a glamourous location. By the way, any dinosaurs on here still struggling to understand why Sky didn't mind letting-go of the SGP/SWC because of the Saturday-night scheduling-headaches it caused them, now that British Eurosport are running smack into the same bother this Saturday ? !!

"Normal finish time" yes, but so far (looking ahead to Saturday) that's not good enough at Eurosport Towers (especially given the speedway's more weather-dependent than either Le Mans or the show jumping) to persuade them to shoe-horn the speedway into the live sequence and open up a reasonable risk of the speedway cutting deeper into the show jumping than would be the "normal finish time". Meanwhile, the "slightly delayed live" option you're suggesting for British Eurosport's coverage of the show jumping is one of the last avenues Eurosport will want to take, especially now we're in an era when so much live sports coverage includes social-media angles (from either the broadcasters themselves or the event organizers) as well as in-play betting. Even as slight a delay as 10-or-20-minutes ruins those aspects, especially if the commentators or pundits slag off a tweet from a delayed-viewer whose comment was extremely accurate for the stage that viewer's reached in the coverage but looks stupid the moment it's sent because the presenters receiving it know the much-different up-to-date situation !! Hence, in this upcoming situation on Saturday, tv-channel schedulers are now always more likely to prefer doing full justice to 2 live events and deal with just one load of frustrated viewers instead of fudging round trying show all 3 live events with the risk of flak flying at various stages from all their viewers. And it always greatly amuses those schedulers that just about every sport has its fair share of ardent fans/sponsors who are hopeless at coming to terms with the existence of equally ardent fans/sponsors in other sports when awkward clashes crop up.

With Great Britain being one of the world's leading equestrian nations, those relatively lucrative sponsorship and advertising deals I've already mentioned linked-up to the live coverage from Cannes will have been struck with the expectation of live coverage on Briitsh Eurosport as well as the Europe-wide version. Between 8.15 and 9.00 this Saturday night, British Eurosport are stuck with only 2 channels on which to show 3 different types of live sports deals, namely the "once-a-year, world sporting heritage" action from Le Mans, the "niche but commercially lucrative" show jumping from Cannes and the latest "popular but still only midway through a long season" speedway Grand Prix meeting. The German tennis's part in this is relatively incidental as it's simply been chosen as the best already-recorded option to fill the 6.00-to-8.15 gap between the end of the live afternoon superbikes and the live evening programming leading into the show jumping once it was decided to show the whole of both those live events rather than shoe-horn the speedway into a set of 3 live events, none of which would then be guaranteed their whole coverage. By the way, just like the "tennis and showjumping from abroad" you mentioned, the speedway's "from abroad" as well so good luck justifying round a Eurosport executive table why speedway from Sweden should automatically have priority on British Eurosport over show jumping from France !!