RobMcCaffery

Yes there is, if you were following the discussion elsewhere. For many years riders with a top division (EL/SGBP) average over 6 were not allowed to double up in the second division (PL/SGBC). In 2017 all were allowed temporarily. The 6 point rule though has been reintroduced for 2018. Those riders over six who took up the option in 2017 are allowed to carry on in the second tier. Those like Nicholls who didn't are not. You may not agree with the logic. I don't but it is there, even if only at BSPA level.

A true character and I'm sorry to hear this news. Back in 1983 my producer and I were pulling up in the car park for the Norden World Final. "Well, this is one place we won't see Noddy". Wrong - he was helping out as a car park attendant... Another time I arrived at Leicester in a hurry to cover an England v USA test match. I'd had to get a train and taxi to Blackbird Road and urgently needed to find the press gate. Noddy was on hand and used his specialised knowledge of such entrances to point me in the right direction. Somebody once suggested he was a self-employed cobbler which would have helped him to have time off for his travels. He seemed to know everyone.

Rather confused by the headline and how a darts story can relate to "Auntie Beeb has remembered what Speedway was, once" (sic). What exactly does that phrase mean? Moving into the real world, darts has been successfully hyped for many years by professional businesses which specialise in such work, because darts went out and found someone to do this. Speedway has not. If the poster is trying to knock the BBC perhaps he should pay attention to what BBC WM are doing right on his doorstep? You have to sell the sport to broadcasters as much as the rest of the media. Instead speedway views the press as freeloaders who are likely to stop people paying to watch the sport. It's remarkable how much coverage speedway actually gets, usually down to the personal enthusiasm of a local editor. You can't just sit back and expect to be given coverage such as that darts piece. You have to at least meet these people half way. Most press and publicity in speedway is undertaken by willing amateurs. I know, I was one. You get what you pay for. Don't blame the media if they're not interested in what is offered to them, if any is.....

If you're referring to my posting no. This was down in the west country and a man who had promoted domestic speedway at the very highest level.

I've worked in other branches of lower level motor sport and they found it laughable that speedway riders expected to make a living from it. A former speedway promoter who had switched top stock cars only invited me into his office after a meeting which had attracted a crowd that would have been the envy of any speedway promoter. There was a queue of drivers, many of whom had spent several thousand pounds on their cars (we're not talking bangers here). Each in turn took a few pounds off the promoter. Occasionally one would get a few pounds more if they had won a race. At the end the promoter showed me the money left over and said "THAT'S why I gave up speedway". Only at the top levels of motorsport where there are very lucrative TV and sponsorship deals do racers make a living and then it usually comes from a sponsor. Over the past near half century I have witnessed a sport whose competitors seem to increasingly want a Formula 1 lifestyle without realising that the money's just not there. If they want the champagne lifestyle or just to draw a full-time wage they need to be in a sport that attracts more than a few hundred people, has not blown its TV deals and whose sponsorship is not generally based on charity from those who love it. Expectations must change.

BT Sport have four channels to fill at that time. Sky have more. Are you really saying that they will not show anything on the other channels whichever gets the contract for this handful of games? Of course they will show other sport and there's no reason why speedway would miss out. This year there were several occasions where a 6 pm SGP programme clashed with the second half of a 5.30 Premier League football match on BT.

Yes it has changed, but other sports survived. We were so reliant on dog tracks and it's the decline of that sport that's dragged us down in London. Land is worth more used for commercial units or housing than running minority sport. Unless the stadium is making good money or has protection, either through a benefactor, legal or council policy you are inevitably under threat. In many ways the Weir was a signpost to the future. I had to break a vow a couple of years back. My wife (an ex-Hackney Hawks fan) persuaded me that I really needed to buy clothes from a shop situated I reckon about on the old fourth bend terracing site. And so, after thirty years I finally returned to the Weir, under protest ;-) I'd made one other visit since 1973 - in 1980 after the Rockets had won their first title at Rye House I went back as part of a personal celebration/commemoration/contemplation. I'd been tempted to ask if we could take the NL trophy there just for a small private parade of it round what was left of the track - a bit of sad sentiment to today's supporters, I expect. I doubt whether the then promotion would have understood the sentiment. It was sickening to see it still derelict after seven seasons that could have given us so many more speedway memories there. It is one of the greatest truths that you do NOT know what you have until it's gone. I hate it whenever I hear of another track's closure, and it hurt like hell when we lost Rye House in 1994, almost two decades to the month after Rayleigh. Thankfully that wasn't permanent but so often tracks, like lost loved ones have an awful habit of staying dead. It's easy for others to say "Well, I'm okay".... With the promotional changes at Rye House I hope to get there next year. It would have been this year if not for poor health and other problems. I'll just take a quiet seat in a corner and remember.

Perhaps you should talk to a former rider ;-) Oh.....

As I've sadly had to say elsewhere, these 'supporters' are great at being happy to see tracks close - as long as it isn't theirs. I know I'm not the only one here who still misses Rayleigh....

You really do have an ageism problem. Most of the 60s and 70s music I listen to would not be described as slow-paced. Of course you wouldn't know - it's far too good for the likes of shallow kids like you ;-)

The Rugby League World Cup runs on hype and reputation. You get a handful of close games, a huge number of mismatches then the Aussies win a couple of games and are given the trophy. It makes the SWC look like a paragon of sporting virtue. Ah well, one of my favourite weeks of the year gone :-( What's left to ruin on the altar of the Ekstraliga and SGP? If the money's not there then someone's not doing their job!

Perhaps we should just run about half a dozen matches a yewar? I thought you people called yourself fans of the sport. I can imagine the reaction from most team sports' supporters if you suggested cutting their seasons down to twelve weeks!

Not if he's in Denmark ;-)

I was at Belle Vue a few years back when the on course betting was operational. A bunch of office lads out for a party night were betting on the races. One was just betting on yellow and was annoyed at how little he was winning. I explained about home advantage, how there was a match going on (they weren't aware) and how the rider in yellow was usually the weaker rider from the away side so was least likely to win. I left realising what damage the sport did to itself by opening itself to the bookies in the hunt for unattainable Sky Bet riches.

Glad to see the penny is beginning to drop in the SGBC.

You can go with him. Never forgiven you for your little 'joke' of substituting a housing estate on a map of Brandon Stadium. How do you feel now that's about to happen for real? Probably nothing. You've been the classic troll both here and in other previous discussion groups. You niggle and provoke,post one-sided bull, then play the innocent when people respond or resort to the childish 'fishing for bites'. People like Gavan only respond to situations YOU create, along with your half-witted fellow Poole fans. You've been poisoning speedway discussions for years and once more your hypocrisy is nauseating.

No, there have been several cases on here lately of people stating quite clearly that they think some tracks should close. We had one guy claiming that all short tight tracks should go while others seem intent on only having a small number of tracks putting out highly expensive teams. We get those who seem to be delighted at their local rivals closing while others seem to think that if a track closes it can easily be re-opened. I suspect those days are gone. I saw speedway go through a phase in the nineties where there were strong suspicions that there was a 'cull' going on of the smaller, weaker clubs. It was extremely distasteful then but if you were at the sharp end of it you'd be sensitive too. For some the efficiency you quote seems to be at the expense of those who can't fall into line. In answer to your point about the wealth needed to play that power game, yes, I think you'll find there are some rather wealthy people involved, even if they don't stay that way for long. A sane, sustainable future can only be grasped by getting the foundations of the sport correct - a healthy grass roots tier feeding into a higher league not just riders but tracks. They need to be based on sensible budgets respecting the fact that any future profits will come from people who are attracted to the sport but don't have a clue who these over-expensive 'stars' are. If there is a high level that can attract expensive international stars then fine, but it must not be at the expense of that sustainable foundation. We need to recruit and train riders AND supporters. Tracks bankrupting themselves to sign riders who might put a few hundred on the gate but who need thousands on the gate to pay for them are the real ruination of the sport -and 'fans' who think names are more important that than good racing and entertaining matches and turn their noses up at anything that doesn't meet their standards or isn't 'meaningful' enough. Good God, we have people claiming some league matches aren't meaningful now! This damaging snobbery has to go. We need people who will accept change and realise that the sport is bigger than the individual, including them. I pray this is only a BSF disease but I do wonder...

I'd have thought most bookmakers would be very interested to hear of result 'adjustment' to manipulate averages or in international meetings to help riders sharing the same sponsor, or taking a bung to put out a weakened team, irrespective of the result, or riders failing to turn up for events that are being bet on because they don't like the money, have 'man flu' or have found a more lucrative meeting elsewhere or fancy a day off.. Very interested.....

A promoter who was losing a grand a meeting, which had to be banked in cash weekly alongside the takings, once sighed "Ah well, it was this or a Roller". I don't think he was talking track equipment. I got the impression it was all an expensive power game for many promoters. Still, if it is, many supporters have seen more years of their team than economics and common sense would have allowed which is surely no bad thing. Some people are far to keen to see tracks close, as long as it isn't theirs of course........

Many a true word spoken in jest (?). I think we can link the decline in interest in meetings other than league matches to the huge increase in real terms of speedway admissions (along with many other sports thanks to football) over the past 30 years. The increases are way above the rate of inflation and speedway, like most other sports is now a much more expensive product than in the past, even allowing for general rises in prices and incomes. People are inevitably much choosier since for most it's no longer a casual thing to pay out for sport admissions.

I am as I am spelt, I think I can still spell my name, Rob McCaffery, ex-ScreenSport, KM Video, occasional Speedway Mail and Backtrack contributor and former jobbing announcer, mainly Rye House and paying supporter for 43 out of 46 years, . The other guy came on the scene just as I left TV. My mother in Cheshire got a phone call once from a friend congratulating her that I'd got a job on BBC Radio Merseyside. It wasn't me. He went on to work for Granada, then Sky before heading off to the Middle East. I'm unsure if he spells his name ery or rey. Mine gets constantly misspelt. You get used to it. Many thanks Steve. It was a long time ago. Yes, we relied on Rediffusion until the main multichannel cable networks were built. Sadly it took so long for the income to flow that I had to get out, and Screen Sport ended up being taken over by Eurosport. As I mentioned elsewhere we were criticised for being a threat to Canterbury Speedway. As I suspected, most would be like you, watch it at 5 then head off to the track. Well, that was the hope that we could persuade people to get out and see the sport for themselves. This is why it depresses me to see people claiming that TV stops people going to speedway, having devoted a lot of time and money to use TV to sell the sport and achieve exactly the opposite. I've had other media involvement in local radio and with the BBC outside the sport so do keep a very close eye on the industry, and the sport's involvement with it, hence my contributions on the subject here. Anyway, this is about speedway finance, not a minor attempted former helper of the sport. ;-)

Yes he was one of the early ones and great company. The first show featured Chris Morton. The studios were in Knutsford so we tended to feature riders racing at Belle Vue that evening, sometimes Stoke or Cradley. Had to do the whole thing off the top of my head since the station didn't have autocue.....

We couldn't afford to do it live ;-) Budget was £1,000 an hour. Times really have moved on.

So because Sky rip you off you won't do business with BT out of principle? How curious. Sky dumped speedway but still rip you off so you punish BT and yourself. You're not being held to ransom. Sky overcharged so naturally competition came in. BT cover speedway because Sky dropped it, first internationally, then domestically There is a service, and that has a price. Nobody's kidnapped your gerbil. ;-) (Principal has a different meaning by the way).

I regularly listened to Doug's work at Ellesmere Port where he worked wonders in creating atmosphere with such meagre crowds. A true professional, informed and witty. For quiet authority though Ted Sear was the best. For wit and mischief it had to be John Earrey.