RobMcCaffery

I recall during 1974 that it was admitted that the stadium plans were having to be scaled-back in order to get the Racers back in 1975, thereby just missing one season. There are parallels in how the replacement Swindon design has been severely compromised compared to the original. We just have to hope that if it ever is built then the present stadium is still in use up to the point at which the replacement is ready. I also hope for world peace and intelligent conversation with Poole fans....... Much is said about how the loss of speedway in London was a mortal blow for the sport. The decline of the Oxford/Reading/Swindon cluster has also been very significant. Now the Midlands has lost Coventry to go with Cradley, leaving Wolverhampton also on their own like the Robins. We can't afford to lose Swindon.

I once was shown the original, detailed drawings for Smallmead which showed a much more elaborate and substantial stadium than that which was built. I do wonder if there was a link between this and your points.

There's nothing on the BBC Commentaries website so I assume not. As soon as the football season returned WM were going to be stretched to have their team available for speedway. Monday's meeting at Swindon is beimg covered by BBC Wiltshire for those unable to watch on BT. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/speedway/17839601 There was an obvious chance to put even a single camera pay-TV feed on the internet tonight but as usual the 21st century is still awaited in Rugby.

That's a relief. I'd heard that the £2 coin was busy elsewhere and they were going to have to find a €2 instead or use change-replacement of 4 50 pences.

If it's off tonight will BT be invited to film the coin toss for the place in the final? ;-)

If, as rumoured, the intention by the BSPA is to run a 12-team Premiership next year, I suggest they keep very quiet until after BT Sport have televised what could well be a totally irrelevant pair of meetings - apart from them probably being quite entertaining. BT only seem to be publicising one meeting on October 9th with no mention of a second leg.

Bear in mind the launch publicity for Freesports has included live, not delayed Swedish Speedway in 2018, but I don't recall it saying ALL matches. There is no mention of Polish speedway. You could find that you abandon a Premier subscription only to find that not everything is on Freesports, assuming it lasts. Considering it's now been going for a month it still hasn't got a reliable schedule on its own website. I'd wait and see what happens next spring.

Sadly too few realise this. In most sports the higher the calibre of competitor the better the sport, but in racing it's different. It's about riders being evenly matched, but then many seem to want to watch 'stars' rather than racing. Value for money, or the perception of value for money is speedway's central problem, and until it wakes up to that the decline will continue. Much, much more consideration needs to be given to the needs of fans than those of riders, promoters, or even TV.

It's unlikely anyone will know until next spring whether they'll be carrying it on either channel. Considering Premier is normally £9.99 a month, £25 a year isn't that much to pay to guarantee being able to watch all matches.

I expect the ice racing will be covered, by Dorna for the FIM, as it has done for many years, but it's a question of whether a UK station will take the programmes. This year no-one took them but they were uploaded to You Tube, eventual;ly. Bear in mind there's a difference between taking programmes made by another company and making them yourself. This year BT have taken the BSI-produced world feed for the SGP/SWC, just adding their own presentation/discussion and interviews, liker Sky before them. For the domestic coverage they have had to go out and make the programmes themselves, again like Sky. In the case of Premier/Freesports they simply take the pictures from CMore Sport in Sweden and NSport+ in Poland,just adding Dave Goddard's commentary. Apart from coverage of British meetings all the speedway you see on TV here is actually made by overseas or international broadcasters just with English commentary or presentation added where necessary. Re Quest TV, it has been used very occasionally as an overflow channel for Eurosport but in the whole of October their only sport coverage will be snooker. It was created to put programmes from the various Discovery channels in one single channel on Freeview and Freesat.

Thank you Dave, you've done an excellent job and shown a deep knowledge of the sport. It's not easy doing it live 'off tube'.

Dave, THAT's my highlight of the season. Congratulations Ghostwalker. Why not give him a mention for all his efforts here, eh Dave? Mrs McCaffery agrees with Mrs r&r by the way. Well, she was a Hackney Hawks fan......

12 home meetings plus possibly up to two play-offs a year and a wrecked second tier? That really the death of speedway. Final abject surrender to BSI and the PZM.

Sadly Freesports is not yet on Virgin Media - they have apparently yet to do a deal for VM to carry the channel. Freesports is not available to all Freeview users sadly. Although it is broadcast in SD for technical reasons it can only be picked up on channel 95 if: 1-Your TV or Digibox is able to receive the HD channels. 2-Your local TV transmitter carries it. Only main transmitters have the capacity to broadcast it. The many relay transmitters cannot. Apart from that it's all simple ;-)

It's not rules or race nights that keep the top riders out of British Speedway. IT'S MONEY! Perhaps those who are deluded enough to think that it's a simple thing to achieve could raid their piggy banks and make a contribution? No Monopoly game money accepted though.

People rightly bitch about the lack of fixtures then when the KO Cup is revived it gets described as 'tin pot'. Just what exactly isn't 'tin pot' then? No wonder the seasons are so pathetically short if this mentality is commonplace. Why can't people just go to enjoy a night out at the speedway instead of sneering at anything that doesn't directly involve winning the league trophy in order to sound clever? After all, by your standards aren't all speedway matches 'tin pot'. Sorry, just realised I was talking to a Poole fan. Second halves (tinpot - axed), pairs (tinpot, axed) fours (tinpot, axed), individuals (tinpot, almost axed), challenge matches/regional tournaments (tinpot, almost axed), cup (tinpot, should be axed?), league matches after cut-off date (tinpot, should be axed?), league matches (tinpot?), speedway (tinpot?). Why can't we just enjoy speedway and enjoy a night out without obsessing on how 'meaningful' it is. After all, isn't all sport actually meaningless, if enjoyable(*)? (*unless you're sadly the type that can only enjoy winning).

Anyone thinking that BT Sport would shift a Champions League match to the red button in order to accommodate speedway wants their bumps reading. So, we have a situation where the logical, allocated and highly televisable reserved date can't be used because one of the teams has scheduled a cup tie that night when they've had all season and still over a month of season to stage it, even allowing for the final. Then the restaging is switched to a night when BT Sport are showing blanket coverage of their biggest financial commitment they have, by a huge margin. In a destructive and incompetent season that was lifted only by the sport being on best behaviour for BT (reasonably complete teams, no walk-outs) when it comes to the final hurdle it all falls apart. I'd love to hear the conversation between Go Speed/BSPA and BT Sport over them shifting a CL match to make for speedway unnecessarily scheduled for one of their peak nights of the year. I think I know the second word, "off".

Certainly no intention 'lose' the thread - I just answered a point raised. . I should have realised you were in the thread and not posted - it's too important a subject to have to deal with the likes of you....

I had no doubt that was the case. When trying to analyse reasons for speedway's decline you can't escape the major factor of cost. Operating costs have soared - paying riders enough to pay the tuners and sustain a full-time racing career being a major part, I would suspect. The cost to both promoter and supporters has become too great to sustain and is at the root of speedway's problems, apart from any internal matters such as guests and weak management of the sport. In say both because I suspect in more than a few cases gate money is only a contribution to cost with the promoter and any sponsor plugging the gap. I well remember at one track the promoter dreading his visit to the bank with the takings the next day because he had to add at at least £1000 of his own money to it. You do get to feel what promoters go through. It costs too much all round. From the supporters' point of view they see a ever more expensive sport in real terms which has become unaffordable to too many. They then see the utter contempt shown to supporters by some riders and management with walk-outs and dubious postponements, before you even think of the rider absences and it's a toxic situation. Sporting inflation, fuelled by football's greed and Sky's ability to feed it has seen sport admissions rise way beyond the level of inflation. Football can take it. Although it is traditionally like speedway a working man's game it has a huge support that either can or will find a way to afford it. Speedway doesn't have that. A Newcastle fan observed that local non-league football clubs played to gates similar to the Diamonds' they at lest were not flying in talent from all over Europe to perform in front of those crowds. Importing foreign talent to perform in front a few hundred people is economic madness. Put simply, speedway's too expensive all round, needs its costs cutting severely to survive in a professional form in Britain and needs to convince a hurt and sceptical following that it remains value for money. Showing respect to customers not just by promoters but as proved at King's Lynn as the latest in a log line of examples this year riders as well is vital. Speedway in Britain won't die - the National League or an equivalent would always sustain it. Speedway is still a great sport at heart. British Speedway is not, but it can still be. Give supporters value for money, beyond providing a winning team, otherwise you're just a couple of defeats away from bankruptcy. I believe that the Isle of Wight could be a lesson to the sport, based on reports I've heard. I just wish I could have sampled it myself.

Using an online inflation calculator, it shows £7.50 in 1999 translating to a purchasing power of £12.15 now, a 62% increase. I suspect if you took a comparison between 1980s admission prices and today's the rise above the rate of inflation would be quite frightening across the sport. In a way the modern price means that today's fans are having to compensate for those that have gone missing - fewer people contributing to costs, let alone profit.

if Bjerre were to be prevented from riding in Manchester on Monday due to him having signed-in to the SEC meeting then surely the same would apply to those riders also signed-in who are due to ride in Poland today? #Letsmakeirrelevantspeedwaythatgetsintheweayoftherealsport

He seems to think that we are all sitting here distressed with our heads in our hands because Polish Speedway is so successful and so stupid we have to have some goading moron tell us so. He certainly has no understanding of British people in general or British speedway supporters specifically. He's irritating but his trolling really is quite amusing - to think that anyone could be so stupid to think that their behaviour is appropriate outside kindergarten. We know internationally we're weak. We know that our top league's a mess, but we also know that these things are cyclical. We had eighty years as senior speedway nation in terms of our leagues and attractiveness to overseas riders. We had many years dominance of international speedway. We've seen it all. Now we have to accept that the wheel has turned. Poland are on top currently but this dominance has pathetically still yet to produce a third world champion and has the sickening need to segregate supporters at certain matches because they are too stupid to be trusted to behave themselves in the company of opposition supporters, like some cheap, imitation football hooligans. The Polish troll should have been evicted and blocked a long time ago, if only to stop him making a total prat of himself

They may be known about by a few thousand Poles and a couple of dozen outside east Europe but that doesn't mean they're known for the right reasons instead of for having moronic, thugs as supporters.

I think Smederna was the first Swedish club I'd heard of. Back in 1973 I was watching my first season of division one racing in Britain, at Hackney where the star was Bengt Jansson who also was riding for Smederna. It was only my second full season watching the sport so I was avidly learning about the international side of the sport. I never heard of Falubaz Zielona Gora though.... Across London the star at Wimbledon of course was another Smederna star, the late Tommy Jansson so it was a club that was noticed in London. Benga/Banger was wonderful to watch at Waterden Road, especially to a 15 year old watching, learning and diuscovering a thrill that 44 years on has still not been lost, despite the antics on the BSF of so-called 'fans'. Good luck in the final.

Another great commentary Dave. Thanks for mentioning the Rayleigh again. The plaque went missing :-( They'd put it in the wrong place - the Sainsbury's is on the land before the stadium ....