RobMcCaffery

They have no divine right, but that doesn't mean they can't apply. Perhaps Rye House would be welcomed? Not all promotions are.

Don't like that 'P' word ;-) I make no comment about the 'S' word......

There's a song about them!

Excellent news, oh person who I do not know ;-) Kart people aren't fools(*). They know the potential for the site. The only site in the London area where you can stage speedway? Properly handled it could be a goldmine even with the sport in its current state. A decent stadium, work on the track to improve the racing. Give a good Saturday night's entertainment and you're on your way. (* A friend out here in the wild west of England used to race and ran a major kart track. He's told me enough to know that it's a well-run sport).

A local radio DJ in Bristol once got himself in deep trouble "In Somerset you're never more than 10 feet from a Brummie".

It's quite clear. The freehold track and the land surrounding is owned by the Lee Valley Park Authority. A lease was granted to a company called Carter & Bailey Ltd many years ago. They were originally the greyhound and speedway promoters, sub-letting the latter to Len Silver in 1974 (there may have been earlier short-term sub-lets). Carter & Bailey was later run by Eddie Leslie who installed Stock Car Racing after the Rockets folded in 1994. Len then acquired Carter & Bailey to gain control of the speedway, selling on to BMR. More recently officials of the kart racing business became the directors of Carter & Bailey. BMR were hied on a one year deal to manage the stadium. Thus the control of the speedway stadium rests with the kart people who are renovating the stadium. I hope this clarifies the situation.

BSPA statement http://www.speedwaygb.co.uk/news.php?extend.37867 This bears out exactly what I understood to be the case when the Jim Mead consortium was bidding to promote there. They point out that the stadium is being redeveloped so logically it is best to wait until it is ready. Regarding forms there are several that are requested, including proof of an agreement with the landlords and a safety certificate. I believe there may be a requirement for proof of financial status. It is very reassuring to see the BSPA state that the door is open and that no mention of past debts is made. The last thing the situation needs is an entry barrier. Whether it is Kevin Jolly, Steve Ribbons or anyone else reviving the place is irrelevant providing they are competent. The fine promises made by BMR were wafer thin. There is obviously a need to ensure that history is not repeated. All Rye House fans can now breathe a sigh of relief. At this time you couldn't wish for mose. Thank you BSPA for confirming exactly where we are.

I hope I do after being a fan for coming up 50 years and directly involved in two bids to revive Rye House. Sadly last year's wasn't successful. I leave it to others to make silly speculations. I don't hide behind a false name so I put what remains of my reputation behind what I post ;-) If what I post is wrong then I am misinformed. It happens, but what I post is what I genuinely know is true, or is an honest deduction from what's in the public domain. It's interesting to see the debt has been raised to Jolly when I was assured that the bid I was briefly involved in last year that the BSPA were happy to receive an application without any requirement to pay others' debts. It's funny., if a business goes bust and another takes over its operations it normally has no liability for the previous business's debts. If this was a case of BMR walking away from their debts only to form a 'phoenix' company to carry on, debtless I could understand but not when it's a new business. I wonder if the BSPA simply use it to deter applications that they don't like the look of? I expect there to be a queue to promote there IF, and IF the kart business rebuild the place rather than just demolish it. Forget BMR. There is nothing that can be done to rewrite history this time and speedway has to move on. Soon we could see a modern stadium, available to stage speedway, within easy access of millions of people including the nation's capital with good road access, to Hoddesdon at least and a direct frequent rail service to central London. Isn't that exactly what the sport in London is crying out for? It would be insane to block it over debts that no sensible business would accept responsibility for? I can't see speedway ever recovering BMR's debt, yet who really is being punished here? Certainly not BMR. Prospective promtions, yes. But in the twisted short-sightedness of speedway there is one apparently forgoten group that suffers the most. THE FANS. Speedway owes those people, not just of Rye House but all of the lost London area tracks one last place to enjoy their sport. Until someone wins Euromillions,there is only one place. Rye House.

If true it is appalling and will attract seriously bad publicity for the venue. It is so easily overcome. You hide your badge. I can't think of even the slightest aspect of H&S abuse could produce such a moronic ruling. Some well-placed publicity should soon get this rightly ridiculed out of existence. Now where's the email address for Motability? They could start a list of blue badge banned places.....with one in the list. What's the source for this, rumour or published statement?

Apologies. I was trying to help people understand the situation. I gave you the benefit of the doubt first time. Best of luck to the Racers. It can be achieved. I shall leave you all to it.

Not if they're pretending to be helping speedway when all they are doing is filling their pockets. There is plenty wrong with making money if it damages other tracks and the sport's reputation as a whole. There is more to life, and sport than money.

I saw Roman racing on ice. It took a while but once he learned to turn left there were a lot of relieved opponents.

We have lost our heartlands or seen them hugely harmed. We have not only lost London but the surrounding area apart from Sittingbourne which is quite a way out. We have lost the M4 corridor from Reading to Newport with the exception of Swindon which can't be taken for granted to survive. In the West Midlands Wolverhampton and Birmingham battle on in the absence of Coventry and Cradley. These represent the real crisis in speedway, not team names.

While it is enormously upsetting to see the search for a new track fail, at least for now, at least the Heathens' fans had another decade with a team to support. No harm was done by Cradley's time at Monmore, unless there was a definitely identifiable drop in Wolves' attendances as a result. The point is, what harm did it do? What damage did it make to speedway's reputation? What harm would Reading racing at Swindon have done? What difference is there to Coventry at Leicester? Part of the reason why Boston was reincarnated at King's Lynn was the argument that it was hard to get people to get behind a reserve side. However, using Boston instead gave their fans a team of their own once more. The benefits to the surviving supporters are huge, but then, who cares about them........

Yes, it's quite agonising. I think at least we'll get Rye House back. All in good time. A case of literally waiting for the dust to settle, I suspect.

Best to walk away from them Chris. You made a genuine mistake while trying to help them. Clearly best not to try. Plenty of other places to talk here.

Now, what do we reckon on the Kings' chances in the CL?

It's possible for video to run at a different speed to 'real time' so, yes, it is possible for minor changes in recording or playback speed to significantly change the apparent duration of a race. The other things that influence variations in timings are human reaction time, and even policy on when to start or stop the watch. I was taught to start as the first rider moved after the tapes rose, not as the tapes began to rise, and to stop it as the front wheel spindle crosses the line. We're talking fractions of a second but with the sport foolishly using timings taken to the nearest 100th of a second it is significant. Even taking times to a tenth of a second on manual timing is questionable given human reaction times and indeed even how responsive to the start/stop button a watch is. Having done the job myself there's a very good reason why I don't bother with race times when completing my programme ;-) Transponders are the way forward, but even then technology can cause problems. I was announcing at a then rare evening meeting at Eastbourne. They used a photo electric cell for timing. As soon as the last rider entered the final lap you had to remember to switch it on, then the first rider to hit the line would stop the clock. The track record went about four times in the first half a dozen heats. Charlie Dugard used to keep a close eye on stand-in announcers for good reason and would sit with me in the box just to make sure I could keep he standard up. After the track record had gone yet again he told me to 'adjust' the remaining times. "We don't want them injuring themselves going for the track record". I still wonder if it was down to the track being different at night or I wasn't operating the equipment properly. It was probably the latter.

Peterborough in the north? Must be a bad print run of atlases out there.

No problem, like you I'm just a supporter who loves the sport. Thankfully I got the chance to do more. I look forward to seeing Brandon restored to its proper purpose. My contribution to the sport is tiny compared to most but unlike most I'm prepared to talk about it openly here in the hope it may help people to understand what goes on, or like me learn from my experiences. Every closed track is the death of a friend. Yes, even Crayford......

Thanks for the reassurance. I hope you achieve your target. Don't be deterred by this set-back. The BSPA may be testing your commitment. Sometimes there are good reasons for otherwise annoying or baffling decisions, especially in speedway. It's interesting how few people remember our efforts of 1999. You do get the feeling it's been rather airbrushed out of speedway history. We put a few noses out of joint but we started another two decades of racing at Rye House.

Just as a P.S., to illustrate the sport's attitude sometimes. In 1999 the Rockets started the season at Eastbourne then moved full-time to Mildenhall. For the match with the Fen Tigers we had to use King's Lynn. One prominent speedway administrator told us "You'll be selling lucky heather and clothes pegs like the gypsies next". Classy.

I'm sorry you are upset but there was one case that I encountered that fully supports that comment. It was an attempt to cash in on what we were achieving with the Rye House nomadic revival. It did not last long, despite some fancy words. Sadly I cannot go further. Speedway has its dodgier moments ;-) The speedway scene in 1999 was rather different to now. We took no gate money from the meetings at Mildenhall. All we earned were club memberships, programme sales and sponsorship. I know that at one point I was informed we had raised enough of the latter to run the whole season with NO gate receipts. You could still make money out of speedway, one way or another twenty years ago. I said there was a fine line but not that either side of it was not legitimate. I should have said that one should be more carefully vetted. At junior league level I have no problem with enthusiasts bringing back old names in those minor leagues where giving riders track time is the priority. I've already suggested, half in humour elsewhere that a Rayleigh v Romford match for the Essex Gold Cup, held by the Rockets since 1971 might be a useful fixture addition at a revived Rye House ;-) I've also had direct experience of a genuine attempt to use another revived team name to put pressure on getting a track back in the form of Boston during their residency at King's Lynn. I worked for Stephen Lambert and Malcolm Vasey through 2000 as their announcer and know how hard they fought for a piece of land in Boston and how frustrated they were by the opposition from the local council. So yes, I fully support and have worked to help teams reviving old names THAT WERE PART OF AN HONEST CAMPAIGN TO RE-OPEN THE RELEVANT TRACKS. Equally I would be delighted to help out junior league teams simply wishing to see their team race again in that enthusiast's dream. Back in about 2004 I was proud to announce at a meeting at Sittingbourne/Iwade that included teams from Weymouth and Scunthorpe. I believe this was the debut of both revivals. I was delighted to feel I'd played a small part in reviving both when they both later returned to racing. Where I do draw the line is where the whole thing is just a cynical attempt to pull the wool over the sport's and supporters' eyes. Believe me, it has happened , sometimes for one-offs or on a longer term basis and that I cannot accept. I'm sure this Reading project to race at Swindon was genuine. This evening I found myself in Oxford and went to take a look at Cowley Stadium. It is heart-breaking to see a fine speedway venue reduced to karting sessions and if a project to put a nomadic Oxford team on track to force the hand at Cowley was formed I'd be delighted to help. Next season will be my 50th in the sport. I lost my track, Rayleigh at the end of my THIRD season, the day after my 16th birthday. Even though we lived on at Rye House it still hurts to have lost my first speedway home, my beloved Weir. Guess why I am so passionate about reviving lost tracks and teams.... I believe you are a Coventry supporter. If so I don't need to remind you of the pain of such a loss. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it though. I can see why the BSPA are wary but feel they're being overcautious with the Racers. If it HAD gone ahead I'd probably have been a regular supporter since Swindon is my nearest track, assuming my recent health recovery might allow me to return to watching speedway live this year. It all goes to prove that not everything's as clear-cut as those on the outside may believe. R.I.P Rayleigh Rockets Speedway (1948-73).

An essential part of the return of speedway to Rye House in 2000 was the entry of the nomadic Rockets team to the CL the year before which proved clearly and emphatically that there was still a workable fanbase. Sadly Cradley weren't able to do the same. There is a fine line between a genuine attempt to revive a track, as with Weymouth and Scunthorpe in open events in the 2000s and just putting a side out with an old name to make money or was just an enthusiast's dream.

I was briefly involved in a serious attempt to relaunch the Rockets last year. The situation is far more optimistic than people might think. We had agreement to run at one point before a change of mind by BMR. Looking on now from the sidelines and having seen the demolition work at the stadium I suspect once the work is completed that speedway will be back. It's far too easy to spread doom and gloom on this forum, often based on honest opinion but lacking in direct knowledge or involvement. If you do have such knowledge then I will bow to it. If not, it does no good to spread despair at the situation. I'd say it all depends on the exit of BMR from the stadium and the kart people wanting to put their new asset to its most logical use.. Now, back to matters Kentish.