enotian

In the case of Kennett you can understand, if the money isn't right. Did I half read in the International section that one of the top German(?) ice racers has moved to Newcastle??? Get him signed, he'll be a revelation in this weather! It'll probably be September before this lot melts!!!

What if a rider claimed the points limit was set so low as to exclude their participation? Plenty have been in that boat over the years.

Drawn at Brough in the U-21 qualifier and riding with Ash at Wolves in the Prem.... might go in his favour. Regardless of availability Kennett on 8.3 is a steal when his last 2nd tier average was 9.3 in what was arguably a higher standard league. Remember, there are a lot of blank weekends this season so it's not inconceivable that schedules could be aligned. If not what's to stop Kennet signing as an interim No. 1 until some of those expecting to ride in Poland find out those opportunities are limited. Kennett and Greaves for me. PS loving the Rye on Saturday confusion, hilarious.

Kennett to Lakeside, Lawson to Diamonds????

What about Lindgren, Robson & Morris joined by T Jorgensen, Rose, Wilson Dean and Clegg. Total 42.46? Expected end of season averages based on Morris & Clegg spending the majority of the season at reserve (both their starting averages are after riding mostly all season in the top 5): Jorgensen 8, Rose 7.5, Lindgren 7.5, Robson 7, Wilson Dean 7, Morris 6 and Clegg 5. Total 48. Should be competitive. Especially as all bar Lindgren will also ride in the Premiership. No out and out No1 but if you can't afford one use up the points with riders who can improve. I still fondly remember the season we started with Thorpe and Lamb at reserve. Strongest reserve pairing ever????

BWD is coming over anyway (signed for Somerset in the PL) and I assume will be based in this country, albeit in the south I imagine, whilst Lindgren is now based in Sweden. I don't know how any of the finances work but you can see Ludvig being costly. Otherwise he'd already be on the team sheet??? Sometimes you've got to speculate to accumulate. If you get the right 5.20 rider and he becomes a 7.00 helping your team challenge for the title you recover the extra cost via extra punters through the gate. Plus (whether you agree with it or not) he becomes an asset. With regard to Nicholls availability/eligibility I'm sure once the likes of Cook, Grajzczonek, Masters & Tungate tumble that their opportunities in Poland are limited the Championship will become an option for them.

Decent but can only see Rose, Morris and Bowtell improving averages whilst Aarnio and Lindgren might struggle with just 20 ish fixtures compared to opponents who are riding 50 to 60 matches. How about Bradley Wilson Dean and one of those 5.20 under assessed foreign riders instead?

Isn't the solution to the disparity of wealth not a GB Super League but a Euro League (or in reality the richer teams joining the Polish League) I think the reality is the even the Polish and Swedish "Elite" leagues are not without financial problems and might welcome a new era which I think would represent the first genuine pan European sports league. Probably run/branded by a BSI/One Sport type organisation to administrate on team strength you'd hope it could attract decent media coverage. Eventually developed into a 16 team European league with the bulk of teams from Poland, Sweden and the UK it could eventually incorporate teams/franchises from other nations (Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, even Russia) the 30 meeting regular season should provide enough fixtures for GP standard riders with the teams supplemented by those also riding in domestic leagues. Whilst the standard would be a little lower than the current Polish top division it would be an uplift on the current Premiership. Domestically in the UK there'd be a two league structure. One Championship standard (made up of those Premiership teams not in the Euro league and the current Championship teams) featuring those riders who wish to supplement Euro League racing and those riders based in the UK including youngsters from the National League.

With regard to pairs competitions I agree the 7 team heat format isn't ideal. Plus I still see Poland dominating, although the one off final obviously adds some jeopardy to that. I've often wondered if using the old knock out grand prix format would suit pairs better? I can't quite remember how it worked but I think it was 24 riders so 12 teams and if you lost a heat your next heat was an eliminator. Problem being some teams would only get 2 rides before being eliminated. I've tried to work out a further re-pecharge here https://app.box.com/s/fzngmofjdpxqb3ycqmkihyjmezg8mepe but never got around to finishing it. In the gp format the riders in 1st and 2nd progressed for the pairs the team avoiding last place would progress. Similar to 4-3-2-0 but in this format the 4 points/win means nothing if your team mate is last. Surely encouraging team riding??? Might make the pairs event a little more interesting.

Clearly credibility would be diminished by having made up countries in a World Final but to be fair Cricket and Rugby seem more than happy to include a team representing Ireland. Consisting of players from both the Republic of and Northern Ireland/Ulster which is it's own powder keg. Indeed both sports have national teams made up of many different nationalities. Not just the minnows either. England, Australia and New Zealand rugby teams are often supplemented by South Sea Islanders on spurious residency rules. The Rugby League world cup had a team representing Lebanon which, without knowing for certain, is unlikely to have its own league system and was likely made up of immigrant Aussies not good enough for the Australian team. Makes Holta riding for Poland seem quite normal. So whilst a Milik/Vaculik pairing would be farcical other sports seem to get away with it. I totally agree with the general consensus here that the 4TT SWC format will be a massive miss in 2018. The Swedish qualifying round this year was sensational. Now if Poland's dominance was a problem in so much as there is limited interest in staging the event how about..... ,,,and I appreciate this goes against the ethos of the winners being the best in the world but bear with me....... ......why not have a SWC excluding any SGP riders??? Presently the likes of Hancock, Woffinden & Pedersen have opted out anyway so why not exclude them all. Effectively Poland would lose 4 and the other nations would 2 or 1 rider with the likes of Slovenia and Slovakia never making the later rounds anyway. Certainly Poland would still be competitive and arguably still favourites but it might make the likes of Czech Republic, Latvia and Germany more competitive? Just a thought......

Good point if the sport was decided on a spreadsheet. Luckily it's not. To assert that a rider who averages 4.94 is better than a rider who averages 4.51 is flawed. In 100 match races between the two does the 4.94 rider win all 100? Does he win more than half? The answer? Nobody knows. Granted the wider the range the more predictable the outcome of the match races. Averages can only ever be indicative of a riders ability. If you wanted you could actually work out a riders real average by removing the points they gained by good fortune (in which a rider in front retired or fell or even made a mistake). Statistics are great but they're almost all inherent of dysfunctional results and therefore skewed and without wanting to have riders averages quoted with a standard deviation the rounding to whole numbers or 0.5 should provide a valid indication of the riders ability.

Well if George has got £4k to spend on a holiday I expect Jason Doyle to be our No 1 in 2018!! Clearly I jest. I expect the limited number of meetings in 2018 are an interesting concept for Newcastle regarding stadium rental. Do they rent March to October or on a per meeting basis. Either way I can see negotiations with the landlords being tricky. Also team building could be tricky. Would someone like Ludvig or Matej Kus bother having a UK set up for about 30 meetings. Like it or not doubling up riders have such an advantage and with the new fixed race nights for the Prem eliminating clashes it might be worth hanging fire on team building until Prem line ups are sorted?

Totally agree. Look at the big franchise sports of American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Ice Hockey all crammed full of stats which really add something to the commentary. Cricket being a fine British example to the point where TMS have a resident statistician to point out key milestones. All of which are fairly simplistic averages and rankings adding interest even when the action is lacking. Football doesn't readily lend itself to such statistical analysis but look at the OPTA stats a commentators dream. John Motson is lorded for use of stats. I'm sure it would add colour to speedway if the announcers/presenters/commentators could quote the latest statistics such as a riders average from gate 4 or who has the most points in the league from heat 10. There are numerous possibilities which I'm sure would be collated if a betting company were invited to collaborate. Could even lead to sponsorship opportunities with prize money for riders heading various categories. Just who was the best rider from gate 1 in 2017?? Not essential to the plot but interesting to know. All the best things in life have layers. For some people watching 4 bikes racing around an oval is enough, others like to keep score, some like to know the stats to aid predictions, some like the mechanical/technical aspects and some even enjoy knowing about the personal lives of the competitors. If people enjoy it it's all good. PS round to zero decimal places for team building so it's far easier to make replacements without being constrained because a rider is 0.05 over the rider they're replacing or restricting team building because the total exceeds the limit by a fraction. I recall in the 80's Eastbourne not being allowed to track the team they wanted because their total came to something like 0.01 over the limit. As such I think someone like Darren Standing was forced out of the team on that basis. Nonsensical.

All of which makes you think that using averages to two decimal places for team building is ludicrous. But that's another story. Mind even if the averages were rounded to zero decimal places the limit should still be 42

Whoooosssshh

Didn't Workington announce Bickley a year ago??

I think Pearson said 1 home 1 away for the Championship in his "video"

http://speedwaygp.com/news/article/6238/hancock-takes-rzeszow-challenge Some interesting Lewis Rose news. In line for some expert training. Not sure what it means for his 2018 availability though, should there be a 2018 that is. (from a Diamonds perspective rather than existentially speaking )

Keep it simple https://app.box.com/s/fzngmofjdpxqb3ycqmkihyjmezg8mepe Most important thing is the standard of on track entertainment. Tracks which are conducive to passing, meetings planned to be completed in under 90 minutes, jump starts to be penalised retrospectively at the end of the heat. Promoters must understand that new supporters are likely to have been attracted by SGP so the product has to meet expectations whilst being financially viable.

https://app.box.com/s/494gzuldbvkra750xbau5u0bj3r28ofp scorechart and full series scores in Excel format

The point being that once the riders realise that they'll be penalised anytime they jump the start they'll stop doing it so there'll be limited instances of a to be excluded rider interfering with the outcome of the heat (check out 100m sprinting since they brought in automatic disqualification, greatly reduced the number of false starts). Also in most instances of a rider jumping the start they're off and away anyway, that's why they jump the start. Also, so what if they do! More controversy more entertaining. I sometimes wonder if people would rather speedway meetings be run on paper so the right result is always achieved. Ultimately something needs to be done to stop the number of false starts but we don't want to see numerous 3 rider races so lets just let the race continue and exclude the jumper at the end. Speedways equivalent of the offside goal. The scoring teams supporters and players celebrate the goal only to have it ruled out at which point the opponents fans celebrate. What's not to like. Same as a close finish. Just adds to the tension. Most fans will have spotted the jump start and will eagerly await the official result hoping that the jump start has/hasn't been spotted. Heaven forbid someone having to change the result in their program making it all messy......... Refs wouldn't make mistakes in this respect if they utilised the technology at their disposal. Heat ends, quick review of the smart phone footage, any jumpers excluded. The prize of avoiding numerous boring time consuming false starts has to be worth it. Unless you guys have an interest in selling clutch plates.

Spot on. The psychology of retrospectively excluding riders will remove any benefits of trying to jump the start (which rider would want to do 4 laps then be excluded?) and mostly eradicate it. And even if it doesn't the supporters aren't subjected to multiple re-starts. Additionally it will add controversy (which is a good thing in case you didn't realise) but the decision to exclude should be supported by technology to avoid subjectivity. Easily done (and I can't believe this isn't standard already) the referee's assistant/time keeper should film every start (and the whole race for that matter) on their smart phone. After the heat the ref reviews the start and excludes anyone who transgressed the rules, regardless of where they finished the race.

It would. Arguably making each heat more competitive? So even if you're 12 up (3 ahead after three 5-1's) you don't want to concede a 2-4 because you're then only 2 ahead as opposed to 10 ahead. The dynamic changes. The individual scores wouldn't be relevant it would all be about heat advantages.

I'd like to see a different match scoring system trialed. Maybe in the National League or KOC. Heat points would still be 3-2-1-0 but each heat win (4-2 or 5-1) would result in 1 match point to the heat winning team. 3-3's would result in 0 match points to either team. So a match could end 15-0 (if a team had a heat advantage in all 15 heats) or 0-0 (if all 15 heats ended 3-3) or any combination between (ie 7-6 or 8-5). I feel it would give the impression of much closer results which might attract some new supporters (if you come from a football background and see a 6-3 result you think "that must've been a cracking match" whereas 50-40 looks like a hammering and there'd be more chances of a draw/last heat decider) You could also change the riders payments to match. I don't know the current rates but for illustration each heat could be worth £1,000 (so £15,0000 total winnings up for grabs). In practice some heats might be worth more (heat 13 and 15) and some less (heat 2 and 8). A heat win earns the winners the grand whilst a 3-3 sees the grand split between both teams. Might this encourage more team riding and therefore improve the product? (if you're out in front and your team mate is last you stand to win £500 but if you can help your team mate into third you double your teams winnings - difficult to tell) As I say worth a trial

Excel score chart https://app.box.com/s/fzngmofjdpxqb3ycqmkihyjmezg8mepe