moxey63

So right. Promoters ditched staging individual meetings because of poor support, but have turned team speedway into a form of individual racing. And they wonder why crowds have dispersed. There isn't that bond anymore for the average fan to want to travel even a few miles to watch their local team.

Well, I never... That, for your info, was my first match!

Yes, Wilike's crash was nothing spectacular. Surely he was going to get up and race the re-run - we thought? I still remember it now: Belle Vue v. Swindon... July 1st 1978... the first race... a green-light start, the tapes were malfunctioning. Wilkie tangled with Swindon's Geoff Bouchard on the first turn, just slid into the fence, and that was it... not only his career was over, but also the normality of his everyday lifestyle. He'd be confined to a wheelchair, 40 years ago it was... aged just 29. The 1977 season had been Alan's best. He'd won a few individual meetings that year - boasted an eight-and-half average at the zoo. But the 1978 campaign was a slow burner. He'd lost heatleader to Les Collins but was recapturing his form - the night before the life-changing crash he'd scored a maximum at Ellesmere Port. Belle Vue were 10 points in front of the then Gulf Oil-sponsored British League with Alan in the side. Without him, that lead was whittled away in the second-half of the season, Coventry taking the title by just two points. The title was Belle Vue's... with Wilkie in the team. I recall Joe Owen had a terrible crash at the same time - he went over the fence at Hull. But he came back from that (although is himself confined to a life in a wheelchair after a 1985 crash). And Mike Lohmann, in 1980, just two months a Belle Vue rider, hit the same part of the fence as Wilkie two years later, suffered life-threatening injuries but returned to action in 1981, though never the same... Lohmann's crash was sickening - the worst I've witnessed - but he raced again; Wilkie's appeared nothing more than an all-four back verdict.. his career and so much more was wrecked right then. You could say, Belle Vue hasn't had a captain to rival him since.

I have to confess to owning quite a few cassettes - mainly Wally "Noaks" Loak's but also from a company called Track Tapes and a few Canterbury matches from 1974. From memory, the 1975 KO Cup Final between Leicester and Belle Vue, 1975 World Champs meeting from Sheffield, 1981 Wimbledon v Belle Vue, 1980 Intercontinental Final, a few King's Lynn's from 1977... and I have a cassette of home recordings for most of the 1980 match reports of Belle Vue meetings on local radio. Every week I waited for them to come on, finger on pause button with so many nerves in case I didn't get the start. Those were the days.

It's fine, Phil... not your fault.

I bow to your superior knowledge, Mr Rising. Now... can you tell me why I couldn't get my Star in either Tesco or Asda this week in Manchester? Going to have to send for it now

TV companies, according to Philip Rising, want live sport. So why the heavy-footedness from these companies to do a deal with speedway? Is it purely that BT, as they did last year, really don't want to get involved until live sport is thin on the ground? This year, though, they might be a bit hesitant because they may have the World Cup to fall back on. Speedway could be looked at as being a sport that is there, but only when there's nowt else to screen.

.. but, it seems, not live speedway.

The argument for live TV surely gets defeated. A prospective new fan surely won't be that interested to sit through all the pointless waffle and still be tuned for the next race. A highlights package, like the olden days of World Of Sport, shows one race after another. Kids of today don't want to be sat there listening to chitter-chatter. It's action they want. Never mind kids, an old-fogey like me would prefer race after race. I used to sit through all the padding SKY gave us during 15 races crammed into over three hours, but I wouldn't like to do it now. It is pointless. Indeed, transferring my old videos over to dvd, I cut out all the studio stuff. The importing thing is racing, a glance in the pits now and again, at the terraces (if you can find a fan). A live meeting is like watching the two years it takes to make a feature film... you can see it all in usually 90 minutes if you wait for the full edit.

If I were to watch a match that was live on TV, I'd record it and then watch it afterwards, I'd fast-forward the gaps between the races which are only there for filling time. I'd watch the races and not much else. It is like most things now - record, watch later, cut out the ads etc. So, isn't it just as good to give whichever TV company is interested a one-hour highlights' package? I am sure there are enough avenues to do this, all the companies that cover meetings at tracks for small profit every week and are good enough standard and picture quality to show on TV for, after all, mainly speedway fans? They often show these companies' footage during live meetings don't they? Buy a speedway meeting on DVD and you get all the action within the hour, no boring experts telling us what they think will happen or what we've just seen happen during 10 minutes before the next heat, and then for another 10 minutes after the next one. Live Tv has been done.

A mix-up of what the competition was, is the least of the BSPA's worries right now. In fact, who's it going to cause the lack of sleep for? The average speedway fan will know the mistake; somebody who isn't a speedway fan won't... and will not care.

Please don't say anything on keyboard you wouldn't say to someone's face. I am not a liar. You've been had by Mike Ashley, alright, but please don't let it judge your fellow man like it has. Let's be friends.

Next. Still some way to catch up with Mike Ashley and the way he's had you toon lot! Smalltime club. Bring King Kev back, I say. I'd love it!

Two words - Mike Ashley!

Steve, as well as that I had to start paying to get in (ah ah). I often think what many would feel are minor changes - the change in bikes, handlebars, rider styles, race jackets and ditching leathers have made speedway, to me, not as arty as years ago. I only have to get a glimpse of an old photo and I realise, to me, speedway isn't the same sport when you look at modern pictures. I am living in the past.

Would that keep away a casual observer in front of his Tv who liked the racing? Some of the football matches I watch on TV have 30,000 in the crowd and it can be deathly quiet. I understand your point though... used to love Wolves coming to Belle Vue in the mid-90s, they brought with them loads of fans and helped whip up some life into the Belle Vue fans. Proper atmosphere.

Was it the green helmet, double points, six-lap nominated heats, riders on handicaps and going for double-points, that mole thingy Sky used to sort of mock us all (just remembered that), getting rid of Suzi Perry, then Sophie Blake? Seriously though, racing has been decent standard. But in Speedway, it isn't always about racing.

Interesting to see Poole, arguably the best-supported club in Britain, cutting its cloth accordingly after losing TV revenue. One of the things they are departing from is the team outfits and returning to race jackets. Seems some of us aren't actually living in the past but have chosen to return to it.

Maybe BT won't start showing domestic racing until the summer, like last year, when the table is just heating up.

No.. not usually. I like to mingle with people of similar views.

I did say I wouldn't go now even if they paid me. You are right about one thing.

Please find me that "quote." If not, please stick to the subject, instead of trying to smear my views. If you don't take my views, then what about all the thousands of lost fans that did pay but no longer attend,. Let's use them as a yardstick. How do we get them back?

Yawn. Had a free pass and yet still stopped going. That tells you how it actually happened, not what you've been led to believe. Never mind, a Donald Trump viewpoint has the idiots cheering. Fake news, my friend. Gullible also.

I have been accused so many times of kicking speedway when I don't even go anymore. Maybe I am stuck in the past, a time when I believed that speedway was a credible sport. I used to get angry that it wasn't given the column inches I thought it deserved in the papers. I used to scratch my head that other sports used to be on TV when speedway, I thought, was so much better than them. But time passes. You can't live in the past. You don't remain gullible. In fact, you get your eyes slowly opened. You get called for giving up on the sport, by some who then tell you dropping two heats from the format and returning to 13 heats, a tried and tested formula from when speedway peaked, who practically say they'll lose interest if two heats are dropped. Folk aren't as gullible, I hear. But then, I hear the argument that folk are so gullible, they get excited about an extra "ghost" point when their team wins by a certain margin, a point that has no impact on the positions in the actual final analysis. That is gullible. Like all those years we kept aggregate bonus point scores, again nothing changed in final placings with or without them (maybe the one switch in mid-table). Gullible, to me, turned to being cynical. I gradually began seeing what non-speedway fans saw in our sport. Somewhere during SKY's live coverage of league matches and the following decade, my belief in the sport evaporated. Maybe seeing it through the square box in the front room made me see it through the eyes of non-speedway people. There is still a place in my heart for speedway. But I just have to overcome my cynicism and get back to being gullible, turning up trackside and thinking the riders I'm cheering on actually are putting in that extra rev for my team, for me as a fan, and not because they want to finish quicker.. they have a match somewhere else, for another team, later on that day. I want to be gullible, and believe sides begin the season wanting to win match number one as much as they do the Play-Off Final second leg. Because now, I have it in my mind that there is a sway of piddling about before they get on with the real business, the Play_offs. There is too much leeway for teams to fine tune. What is the point in a series of league matches when sides manipulate their way and try to gain advantages before the Play-Off. And then we all start afresh there. I am cynical. But speedway made me this way.

Some mock fans who are stuck in the olden days. But, let's not forget, we are trying to rewind speedway to being as popular as those days. Those were the days we had little TV coverage but terraces were healthy, unlike now, when we have quite-healthy TV coverage but the terraces are mainly for growing weeds. Harping back to the past may infuriate some who protect their love of speedway like a caterpillar in a matchbox, but speedway needs to find what went wrong... otherwise it may as well be in a matchbox that has no holes to breathe.