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I think that the bloke on the kerb from gate one is moving off the inside due to his momentum from that start position, thus allowing the gate four bloke the opportunity to undertake him, all due to the gates they started on. We will have to disagree on this one but I respect your opinion.

Absolutely NOBODY has said that.

I know for a fact that speedway isn’t the best kept secret in town as we have done the following over the years to bang the drum. Have an advert on local radio over an extended period of time. Have an advert in local newspapers over an extended period of time. Have an advertising board on some of the busiest roads in Manchester. Have posters in shops and businesses. Had out flyers in local shopping areas. Have a float or attend local fairs and carnivals. Attend local trade shows. Give out free tickets to schools and businesses. Take bikes and merchandise into schools to accompany the talk they deliver on the sport. Be featured on local tv news’s 4 or 5 times between March and October. Have a regular editorial in local papers. Have a 30 minute highlights programme on a local tv satellite station. Form a tie up with local groups and offer free entry and supporters club membership. Attend (and win) local sports team of the year awards. I know I keep saying it and it’s a bitter pill for us all but as a generalisation, people do not like speedway. I asked recently if you could all ask family and friends to attend a meeting with you. I had no response but I’m guessing if each asked 20 people then out of the collective thousands that were asked the answer would have been around a 100% no. This is from people who now know where and when and how much the local speedway is and the opportunity to attend with a knowledgeable friend but still refuse the invite.

With regards attendances, the lore is fans overestimate home crowds and underestimate away. Clubs aren’t happy with their crowds and if you’re making a bob or two then great but no club has any bragging rights about attendance. Manchester has so much going on in the battle for the leisure pound. The average man/woman in the street (which is exactly what a speedway fan is) only has so much expendable cash so should they attend one of the many many shows or concerts etc at £50-£100 a pop they do not have the money to visit speedway. They can catch the speedway almost any time but when a particular show or artist comes to town for a short run or one night only then it’s easy to see who wins. Add in the plethora of sporting greats in and around the city then it’s amazing that such an unfashionable sport as ours can hold its head above water in the area. This is not a dig but I spent a week in the B&B Hotel in Ipswich at the end of last October. I struggled to find anything to do. No theatre (one production had been cancelled), no gigs and no comedy. There wasn’t even a pub quiz night. I had to travel to Cambridge to get my theatre fix. I found Ipswich to be a lovely town and had it been summer then a walk along the waterfront together with a drink and a meal would have been great but winter time offered me little. With limited competition for the leisure pound it’s little wonder that places like this and Poole get fairly decent crowds.

With regards attendances, the lore is fans overestimate home crowds and underestimate away. Clubs aren’t happy with their crowds and if you’re making a bob or two then great but no club has any bragging rights about attendance. Manchester has so much going on in the battle for the leisure pound. The average man/woman in the street (which is exactly what a speedway fan is) only has so much expendable cash so should they attend one of the many many shows or concerts etc at £50-£100 a pop they do not have the money to visit speedway. They can catch the speedway almost any time but when a particular show or artist comes to town for a short run or one night only then it’s easy to see who wins. Add in the plethora of sporting greats in and around the city then it’s amazing that such an unfashionable sport as ours can hold its head above water in the area. This is not a dig but I spent a week in the B&B Hotel in Ipswich at the end of last October. I struggled to find anything to do. No theatre (one production had been cancelled), no gigs and no comedy. There wasn’t even a pub quiz night. I had to travel to Cambridge to get my theatre fix. I found Ipswich to be a lovely town and had it been summer then a walk along the waterfront together with a drink and a meal would have been great but winter time offered me little. With limited competition for the leisure pound it’s little wonder that places like this and Poole get fairly decent crowds.

FTG is no longer a derogatory term as many fans have expressed their liking for this kind of heat and find the passing at some tracks boring. There is no need to defend FTG anymore, nevertheless this defence goes on with some examples being plain daft. If you can’t fathom the intricacies of the first few seconds of a heat and the impact a riders start position has then you need to rewatch some televised meetings. The commentators discuss at length the options open to a rider over the first part of a heat or more importantly options not available. Any passing up to the exit of B3 L1 is almost exclusively influenced by the start position and this is why I call a heat at that point then compare the order come the checkered flag. This is by no means an insult but yesterday only heat 3 & 15 saw a change in order after B3.

I’d be happy if this was the play offs as we can pull back a 14 deficit within 9 heats. In every meeting at Foxhall this season we have suffered 5-1 in heat 13 & 15 which is unacceptable given our top two. In both fixtures we were in touching distance on a close defeat of small win as the rest of the side had done their thing. Harsh on Brady & Dan but everyone has a job to do in their particular slot. I’m confident that they will succeed in these heats come the play offs and help lead us to the ultimate prize once again. Whether they go on an unbeaten 29 ride run again like last year is debatable.

All this talk of points being available to some teams and not others reminds me of the double point joker used in the 2006 final. Peterborough were successful in gaining 61% of their total points whilst Reading gained 63%. Peterborough won! It was then I realise speedway was more in line with WWE than a proper sport and entertainment was the holy grail and not providing a true sporting contest. Whilst the sport is definitely still the latter, maintaining the former has proved elusive for the UK’s top league.

Everything will be finalised on the Thursday before Mondays play offs. Can’t wait. https://britishspeedway.co.uk/calendar/september-2025/

It’s so frustration but you make a valid point. Looking at positions 2, 6 & 7 this season, they ride well at home but as you point out poor away. The difference in their collective home and away average is 2.07 and you are correct that this signifies their “one track pony” status. We don’t often agree but there is no getting away with the figures on the one.

Sheffield will pick The Aces again.

Spot on and as good an argument for one lap dashes being adopted by UK speedway as I’ve ever seen.

Very much a gating contest and one our bottom end have been successful at in the not too distant past. Norick has fairly recently posted scores of Paid 9 & 2 Paid 8’s but he was making the all important start, so crucial at Foxhall. Similarly Jake 2 Paid 6’s and Zach Paid 13 & Paid 10, both riders wearing their gating gloves on those occasions. I’m not overly optimistic of an Aces win nor an exciting night’s actions as the gate’n’go leagues second best gaters take on the perennial worst of the bunch. All those “it’s only 15 minutes of entertainment” will be having kittens as this one will be down to less than 2 minutes.

Looking at the current GSA’s and taking into account Dan’s Brit reduction for next season, we can keep six of this years team and replace Cook with Zagar. Fair play is The Aces way, sadly lacking in our sport and life in general imo. Leon is still young. He’s only 16 months older than Norick. Had a read of updates and I’ve seen the Brady race on social media but apart from this and the world number four passing their RS for second, is their anything else I’ll miss after the first seven seconds of the heat if I don’t watch the “highlights” on Dmax?

Given Dan’s showboating after heat 15 I’d guess the communication between manager and riders was sadly lacking. You hit the nail on the head about letting Emil go and concentrate on Jason, a tactic that I think would have worked if attempted. It’s always been a bugbear for me when riders are told the score and they say they had no idea. If I was manager I tell all my team that I could ask them the score at any time and I’d want a correct answer. Sure, riders want to win but the team must come first so why jeopardise a needed safe position with an unnecessary risky passing manoeuvre. It’s very different these days as it’s a group of individuals riding for a club and not a team in the true sense of the word. If a rider doesn’t know the meeting score how will they know if Jake is have a bad time and needs some assistance?

I think we spend as much time on here discussing what might be prior to a meeting as we do discussing a meeting result. We use past performance as a way of formulating our predictions and I feel this predicting is right and proper on a speedway forum. We predict what Dan and Jake will likely score together with all those in between and we do this for both teams. Using this method we can arrive at a likely score for any particular rider and base our assumptions on this. If we are to stop doing this then pre meeting discussion will be less than it is now, which is down greatly from its heyday. On the Jaimon scores we need to remember he would have been partnered by a very effective Zach Cook so we can’t just willy nilly add 4 or 5 points to our total. Using the previously mentioned method of predicting scores I’d have us finishing on 48 points with Jaimon in and it would still have been a last heat decider. As I posted before, not a convincing win and not one to inspire an aggregate win should we meet in the play offs.

I use to live near Stuart and a few years ago my ex organised him to attend an It’s a knockout event, at her school! A while after a friend of hers bought her a lovely painting of some giraffes. I came home, admired the picture then noticed the artists signature. It was Rolf Harris! Like I say she’s my ex so I dodged the conversation when asking how the kids are, “They’re fine, Gary Glitter has taken them to the Jimmy Salville appreciation society where Rolf Harris is doing portraits.”

That would unfairly amplify the home advantage imo. 1 lap dashes are a great concept as almost completely at most tracks the other three laps are redundant.

Depends on the meeting. For more years than I care to remember the governing body have been lenient when riders are chasing world championship individual glory, often making use of the column inches that follow with the true grit stories. The fans also rally around such riders. If he was to ride in a foreign league, completes that fixture and does not aggravate his injuries then action should quite rightly be taken. I hope he returns, especially if we end up against them in the play offs as two fit teams would be a great spectacle as our A fixtures demonstrated.

That happened to us in the KO cup last season. We drew with Sheffield over 30 races then they had the home advantage when it came to the decider. We always have the second leg for this very reason.

Good meeting for the tele. A few too many follow the leader heats for me but given their popularity it was nice to have for viewers at home. No Jaimon meant we missed out on a narrow and not convincing victory. Brady scoring 11 from 7 rides can - we hope, only be a blip. I think it’s taken him the whole season up to then to drop that amount of points around the NSS. Norick a bit off his usual scoring but nothing to write home about and once again when our reserves contribute little then we cannot seem to compensate and tbh any points they get it a bonus so we NEED to compensate if we are to succeed. Zach is riding over and above and the reality is we should be reaping the benefits from his performance and not be using it to help us scrape home. A few tactical gaffs from Mark did not help the cause either. Pulling back 14 points over nine races gives me some heart for the play offs as we will no doubt need that level of performance but over the full 15 when they arrive. Lots for both sets of fans to feel good about and with a satisfied armchair audience it was overall a great night for the sport.

Max Fricke Jack Holder Jason Doyle These are the ONLY three opposing team members currently riding that have a higher 2025 away average than Jaimon. https://britishspeedway.co.uk/2025-rider-statistics/

With talk of a potential abandonment, I had a look at dates going forward and noticed the last PL fixture currently is just four days before the play offs. As we have been told previously this isn’t enough time to promote the events so will we see Morris & Bates picking again for commercial reasons?

Their current deceleration has been accepted & published. To get Kerr & Sedgeman in puts them over the limit at 40.91 so wouldn’t be allowed. If Jye is injured they aren’t allowed a facility as he hasn’t ridden for them yet. All the above is per the rule book which we know is rather fluid so whatever Bates & Morris cook up again is what will happen.

I was probably very lucky to watch speedway at Hyde Rd with the great racers around in the 70’s. We’d travel to Halifax & Sheffield and they provided great racing to. I remember around ‘76 we went to Coventry for the first time and PC missed the start (as always) and didn’t win. I asked Dad “what’s up with Peter” and he explained about gaters paradise type tracks. They were in the minority back then. It’s my opinion that the Scandinavians preferred gate’n’go tracks and these then became more common over the years. More recently (if 20 years can be considered recent) Poole, Wolves & Coventry made gate’n’go their thing and with trophies following it became an option for others to follow. Add in air fences and new bikes and the trend has now taken hold. I think even with those issues tracks could still be better for racing if prepped differently. Kings Lynn have a very grippy surface and like the WC semi in 2016 when the FIM brigade prepared a grippy NSS, the racing was dull but fast. NKI setting a new track record. Slicken off Saddlebow Road and I believe the racing would improve. Wolves were just short of an outside line and it was specifically made that way when the result mattered. The Olympic was great and a dead rubber meeting in the supporters cup (which we lost) was a great spectacle. I’m sure fans at other tracks could offer up ideas to improve things though unfortunately the cost might be prohibitive. I understand why fans would look to sugar the pill when describing the entertainment at their tracks but maybe behind the scenes you need to do more with regards questioning your promotions lack of interest in providing a racetrack. Maybe then this customer will return and who knows I might bring a coach load with me again.