moxey63

Time certainly does move on... and, even since the last time I posted on this topic earlier today we have had to say goodbye to another club. The influx of new fans just itching to see the new type of speedway bikes, while the old fogies just wish they could whizz back to the 80s when they actually had someone stood near them at the track to chat with. Doesn't half take it out of you, the long walk to the nearest fan just to ask the time for the last race.

Well, what you do there, instead of standing on the terraces with a face like thunder, like when hearing Mike Ashley isn't selling up, contact your speedway club and volunteer to write a page or two in the matchday programme. Spend thousands of pounds on research material so you can provide fans with a few facts, keep all your statistics up to date so you can be on the ball with what you write, put aside a couple or few hours to get it all down in writing. It is quite easy. In fact, for a few months, you'll enjoy doing it for free. You get your name in the programme, you know. Then, the novelty will wear off. But let us know how you fair after the first five years or so, see if you still have the inspiration to do it for Jack-all without quitting. I did it for 18 years. Without a complimentary ticket, I'd have done possibly a third of that. You need something to keep you motivated. It's like asking riders to ride for nowt. Go on, email Newcastle and ask them. I am sure they'll keep you in mind. Let us know how you get on. But, if you're successful, please don't mention to any of the track staff that you feel they are on freebies, getting in for nothing despite all the hours they contribute. All they'll do is hand you a shovel and say "get stuck in then." Then you'll have no time to do your programme piece. You'll have a face like thunder then, and for a reason. It is people doing it for a complimentary ticket that helps what is basically an amateur sport tick along. And, reading between the lines, excuse if I misread, fellow poster Daniel Smith has worked within a club - would he be one of these freeloaders, Tsunami? Your face of anger went to one of embarrassment when he disagreed with you. Anyway, I won't keep you any longer. And don't forget, tell Newcastle speedway you're offering to do it for free. You'll still pay at the gate. If they turn you down, don't call them "tosser." I can take it, don't know about the fragile geordies.

Exactly. I still love speedway too, more so the history. The link between me stopping attending and this so-called free pass being removed is used as a smear tactic to stain the view of another disillusioned fan. I am just one person. The worry we have is what's happened to the other tens of thousands. Perhaps they had free passes that were whipped away? Some people, the few who still attend, will defend it to the hilt. the likelihood is one day they will become one of us - a used-to-go. Promoters rise admissions and cut team building limits to balance the books. Hence, one reason we are what we are.

If it wasn't for people like me - the programme compilers, track staff etc, speedway wouldn't run. Or if clubs had to pay cash to tempt people to do these duties, you as a fan would have to stump up more. It is a waste of time trying to educate you, but I wasn't actually getting in for "free." I was providing material for a programme that the promoters could overcharge gullible punters to pay for. Speedway has always existed on this arrangement. So, as you suggest, it wasn't my fault alone for the continuing decline of speedway. Therefore, old chap, I cannot chat with you any longer. You make my head go all chalkie. Have a nice day.

Yes, I admit to it... but answer my question. One fan, free admission for 18 years... but surely not enough to bring speedway down to the state it's now in. But, if you want to call names, I'd give you more credit if it was to one's face.

How do you come to the conclusion that my scrounging helped contribute to the continuing decline of speedway?

Please explain why I subscribe to sports channels that actually show live speedway... and yet never watch the speedway on them? I have broadband, but never watch live-streamed matches. Just that you thought I stopped going to Belle Vue because my free pass was withdrawn? Defeat your point a little. In 2018, Speedway is widely available without having to go trackside. It's like I'm saying there's speedway racing in my garden... but I draw the curtains.

Speedway promoters are a funny breed. I don't know how they managed to earn the money to plough into speedway, but to have an attitude of "It's my money so I'll risk it how I want" is surely doomed to failure and their track's closure and a further detriment to the sport. At Belle Vue we used to have a fellow who told fans to stay away if they didn't like it, and yet complained when crowds dwindled. When you rely on the public coming through the gates to pay you back in some kind of form and it is not a crazy bucket-list idea that you have in life to simply try speedway promoting, then why do they not listen, have a head in sands attitude and then end up pulling down the shutters? Another black mark on the sport when it happens. For too long we have relied on people running the sport who don't mind losing cash and don't care what the people handing money at the turnstiles think. To announce every winter that their respective club has lost money is an embarrassment to their promoting skills and business acumen. And we, as speedway fans, are more than happy to go and watch a "sport" which is being run by these idiots. Or do the gaps on the weed-filled terraces tell otherwise?

In the modern day when we're told speedway riders are more professional than at any time, why is it that the sport seems more amateurish with each decade that passes? This isn't a dig at the sport, I think it's more a reflection on the people who have arrived to run teams, most of them long-time fans, and have no blinking idea what they are doing. To them, it's better than setting up the spare PC in a back bedroom and playing a speedway promoter game on an old Spectrum. In the old days, the sport was run by distinguished-looking men in nice suits who were located in salubrious offices in London. Perhaps we should have seen the writing on the wall when an arm of the sport began being run above a corner shop and promoters were happy to wear red jackets and Wulf coats.

Speedway is like that nomad rider at the end of his career, flitting around the country in search of rides. Almost two decades at the top with Sky, all the lavish money, but now has to ride for nothing. I looked down the team order for one of speedway's prime draws, Poole, for tonight's match at Belle Vue. I don't think I'd leave my keyboard for that, never mind the house, or pay the gate money. That is just one problem, a side who'd once bring the likes of Rickardsson and Adams in the same side is reduced to seven-second strings. The needless stop-start at the beginning of tonight's TV offering makes me want to reach for the remote. Don't feel tempted to visit the track, and TV is driving me away. Speedway in this country has a simple vision to answer the falling attendances - to raise admission prices and weaken the teams.

If there is no sort of feedback, just fans dripping away by the week, then how can the leak be stopped. You don't learn by keep making mistakes and not be advised what your mistakes are. It might be that the sport is just so fatigued now, stuck in some kind of timewarp and attracting the odd newcomer now and again but relies on the old guard. I mean, Belle Vue fans always moaned in recent years that it was the drab Kirky Lane keeping them away. Once they had their own place, they'd come flooding back. So... what happened?

Imagine 20 purpose-built tracks like Belle Vue though, where the action is brilliant but the crowds remain poor. Nothing wrong with the racing there, so what's keeping them away? There has never been a better time, with social media, to do the biggest survey the sport has ever carried out. Ex-fans could be asked why they stopped attending, for example, and even get a hint of whether current fans are growing disillusioned - and why.

Think someone's hacked into BWitcher's account. But if it his the man himself, and he carries out the threat, it shows you can be a critic of speedway, not attend, but still have a fondness for the sport. It just drives you to desperation sometimes.

Like how far our heads can get in the sand before we stop breathing?

I'm not kidding myself that speedway forty years ago was perfect either - for in one 1980 fixture Bobby Schwartz of Reading and Hackney's Finn Thomsen pulled on Aces' jacket as guests in one match - despite both of their teams challenging the Manchester club for the league title! And it happened late enough in the season - mid-September - to have had an influence on the title race.

Still going through old mags, and back in 1978 Belle Vue were celebrating its 1502 member to the Supporters’ Club. I know it is 40 years since, but perhaps the lure of following a team – you needed to join the club to travel on club coaches – was one of the reasons. Belle Vue, admit ably, had an attractive side, but they had a decent line-up for much of the seventies. My belief - back then; it was the lure of following a side you could identify with. They were your boys, which you felt all sort of emotions when they won and lost. Racing was no better, but you had the belief that it was your side. You were energised to follow it on its travels, even the odd individual meeting that one of your riders was in at some far off corner of the country. But that has gone. And so-called promoters scratch their scratched-scarred heads wondering why. Speedway has suffered a continuous decline since 1978, but modern day speedway puts two fingers up at the fans that want that team ethic back we had even 20 years ago. When you see men on television riding in a Swedish match and scoring well after having had a bit of a stinker for your club just 24 hours earlier, it makes you think – why should I support a team of riders who don’t really mind what they net for you or your team, because they have a preferred match in Sweden or Poland later that same week?

I have been saying this for yonks. That's why I'm out!

Just going through the 1980 magazines and came across a letter. The writer experienced at the turnstile one night another supporter enquiring, before he paid, about who wasn't riding in the line-up. When the turnstile operative gave the reply of four names, he walked off and said he'd save his money. The letter writer felt it was another fan lost to the sport. How many have followed this path? How many lost through rain-offs when promised the meeting would be on? The writer, even then, said a fan wants to know who is riding and not line-ups filled by everyone and everyone. And so we have the problem of speedway's decline almost 40 years on - with present day mish-mash more off-putting than even in 1980, perhaps, when the sport was thriving. Individual meetings were becoming less popular back then - but now we have a raft of such meetings dressed up as league, as many fans can't identify with who's in their colours, they'll be in someone else's at the drop of a finish flag. Most riders are now riding as individuals - team mates one night, racing against those team mates the next, a series of testimonials.

Speedway is a brilliant spectacle. Take the Final race of the British Final on Monday, for instance - it was tremendous on the eye. These guys were really going for it on a superb track (thanks Chris Morton and David Gordon). I believe those riders wanted to win - no pretence. It's when you come to the actual fabric of the sport - team speedway - when it starts to get a bit less honest when guys are pieced for short periods during a season for one team, go off in separate ways on another night for another one, and then we all start again in the winter to say who's where next season. Build up the team ethic with riders and fans, make it tribal between riders and fans of different teams, and then you may be getting somewhere.

Pulling out an old programme from your collection is like hearing that old tune on the wireless, seeing an old photograph from your prime. Can’t beat that feeling… glancing down the line-up, the blank racecard and remembering your youthful anticipation, the team line-ups, riders you’d never heard of… a blank programme as we entered the unknown for the next 90 minutes. I couldn’t get rid of my collection - 40 years of my life.

Kept all my programmes of meetings attended - would never dream of ditching them even though I no longer attend. Just digging them out every now and again, you end up flicking through many, ending up taking longer than expected to try to find out what you got them out in the first place for.

I think the skill of being able to fill in a speedway programme without any mistakes makes most fans feel they know it all.

Crump was racing against the likes of Rickardsson, who nudged him into second place on many occasions, despite turning up with his moped strapped to the back of his Austin A40. Sometimes, BWitcher, you twist things to suit your argument. It is ok to be wrong, sometimes, you know....

The two-day experiment didn't work either. How many Poles, thinking the chance had slipped, didn't bother for the second day? A one-day meeting doesn't offer the chance to choose. I think a race-off on the Friday would have been better, like the SWC had, which used to give good racing.

It’s all about opinions. Woffinden rode really well this week, no taking that away from him. But I rate riders on how they have performed domestically - and who was in opposing starting slots when in championship racing. So, therefore, during my 40-odd years (since 1975) I put the likes of Mauger, Nielsen, Rickardsson, Crump etc in the lead. Comparisons should be, I feel, on 10-15 year periods. I must say though since about 2010 the level of competition in world speedway has dramatically dropped. I am not going to name names of current day men, but Jason Crump racing now… he could win it on a moped. Regarding Tai being the best Brit… on domestic form over here? Give your head a wobble. Two world titles, ok, but, with respect, against a near 50 year-old who in recent times turned into being the best, I would say, simply because the best had retired (he won his second title two decades after his first, which tells you) and another man who lifted the crown who perhaps would not have stood a chance in other years?