moxey63

Joe Screen actually made his debut for Belle Vue in 1989 - scored 10 points in the match and then rode his first Junior fixture afterwards. So he was already good enough, no need for junior racing. Carl Stonehewer and Sean Wilson would have come through with their talents and were producitive grasstrackers at the time. You could say Mark Loran made his name in the main team and used junior league for practice. Very rarely did the junior league present the talent it was aimed at producing.

Reading the comments on here, I expect the next figures they'll be using at BSPA HQ will be ones on the tape measure, sizing up the coffin in preparation for British Speedway's impending death. As for giving young Brits chance to race each other in efforts to progress - that is commendable. – but I expect favoured in NL circles and not the EL… unless admission prices are reduced accordingly. Dring, dring… is that SKY, at this anti-social hour… just desperate to sign the EL to another 5-year deal? Hold on though, it could be BT Sport…

It is a similar scenario I suppose to the mid-80s, when they forced teams to track at least one junior - many sides fielded two to keep the average of the side below 48 or something.

To cut costs, make races one lap, have meetings in daylight to save energy bills, only employ riders that won't score any more than two points a match, stop the skidding on bends to keep shale on the track...

Wrong there, bud... but you almost had me. Think you may have a snide dictionary... my copy has the word in it.

One of the first priorities to reform British Speedway is by employing riders - whether Brits or foreign - that actually want to race here... and don't ditch us when our gloss wears a bit dull, like others I could mention, who'll xome a crawling back when Poland and Sweden kick them out and they have nowhere to ride... Any rider that decides he wants to sit out British speedway while reaping the delights of overseas leagues should have a percentage placed on his average for every season he decides to miss.

But one-day speedway matches are attended by a handful, and yet by contrast GPs and Play-Off Finals are packed out. It's surely similar in the two sports... if the product is worth attending, it's going to attract big crowds. Speedway needs to stay clear of little novelties - one-lap handbag dashes, two extra laps for Poole riders and it gives the rest a chance - these things aren't needed in a sport worth its name. Basic rules - yes, some kind of bonus for a side performing away but losing - but not rules that only baffle the fella who wants a quiet night on the terraces and even to have answers to questions about the rules, when that terrace newcomer asks.

Injuries? Surely all weren't.

Just saw one headline in this week's Star... Poole used 31 riders this season. That's one of the problems... too many short term measures. Yes... and cricket is about as dead on its arse as speedway. Look at a football table and you know how many matches a team has to win to take a certain position. Speedway used to be the same... you could work out the matches in hand and see, if you got so many points, where you'd be. It was simple.

I am just updating some stats for a book I last did about four years back, a companion for the Peter Oakes' British Speedway Leagues. Out of interest, mine covers 1991-09 (hopefully it will be up to date shortly). However, cutting to the chase, having not really taken much interest in different competitions in recent years, I am left head-scratching at some of the antics employed to try and sprinkle a little sparkle into speedway. We have the end-of-season Play-Off for the Play Offs... The four points for a big win, three for a big win but with a full team... it is too confusing for a casual bystander who wants to just watch a sport for what it is. If I knew what a sugar rush was, I would say all the fixtures - all the Cup Finals - at one main point in the season is too much. Weather being what it is, why have so many prime matches in October? It is too much to take. Have we got so many competitions so, a bit like being at junior school, all the kids have chance to win something? And don't get me started on what rider belongs to whcih team... At times I think we're back in WW2 years, when any rider that turned up would get a ride at active tracks.

You become frustrated by the lack of ideas from the people running the sport - a sport we all love - and just what they come up with next, that it hurts us... In turn, we, as fans, grow so frustrated... we can't take any more and eventually turn our backs on it.. at least the attending side. If a rule hasn't been invented yet... watch this space.

Is it true SKY will put the millions saved from the loss of soccer CL into the proposed speedway Champions League? I know, give me a slap... I'm being chatty!

I was surprised after attending Buxton for my first in-the-flesh meeting a month ago just how much I missed the sport, its live version. The smell, sound of the bikes... it was totally different than watching the last 5 years live TV matches. Nothing had changed with the sport, but that I actually rekindled my fondness of the sport due to attending one meeting really opened my eyes. Speedway is special. If promoters can't see the future and where they want to take it, other than a one season at a time approach (followed from week-to-week when we're into that season), then hand it over to someone who can.

Losing Sky may be a blessing. Naturally I'd sooner keep it. As a stay-at-home fan, I may have to make efforts to attend my local circuitsfor my ration. How many others will have to do what i will? Then again, you have to then gauge the loss of Sky revenue and the possible influx of fans back to the terraces.

Maybe I am odd (I know most will agree), but seeing the stars in action has never really been my prime interest. Bread and butter guys put on just as much a show as top liners; it's all about seeing beyond any points they score. A better-organised product is all most wish for, the risk of some decent racing; a feeling that you have attended a credible sporting spectacle.

Speedway is special but not a professional sport. It has an image and a feel to it, an here-today, gone tomorrow product in which so-called promoters enter it with bright ideas but often are no more than fools with money. When a speedway office is a cabin used at most scrap yards as their office, perhaps that typifies how far the sport has progressed in its near 100 years, when most stadiums are owned by dog people, and speedway is at the mercy of the next sell off for new homes to be built on the land.

For those worried about having to subscribe to different packages for their intake of TV speedway, how's about setting up a dvd exchange deal sort of thing. Know it could be dodgy, but as long as you're paying for one production...

I think the entire season is lob-sided. Teams pend all year trying to reach the top of the summit that is a Play-Off place, and then everyone is expected to cram the importance of the prvious six months and more into a few weeks, matches being played on the same night as if the tide was coming in and there was a crazy need to complete them before the world was nigh. You should be able to enjoy the semis, take in and digest what happend in each, possibly stage one a week or at least every few days. Why the need to cram two matches in at once? Never really liked this, apart from the initial novelty value. I also get a feeling that the eventual outcome of the Play-Offs are almost always settled, even before the first race kicks off. The recent Birmingham v Poole encounter proves a point, a complete waste of time in which you knew from the off who the winners would be. British speedway perhaps should use SKY's departure as a time to re-invent the sport, it is too stale right now and really needs a few things throwing up in the air and seeing how they land on the floor.. I think the entire season is lob-sided. Teams pend all year trying to reach the top of the summit that is a Play-Off place, and then everyone is expected to cram the importance of the prvious six months and more into a few weeks, matches being played on the same night as if the tide was coming in and there was a crazy need to complete them before the world was nigh. You should be able to enjoy the semis, take in and digest what happend in each, possibly stage one a week or at least every few days. Why the need to cram two matches in at once? Never really liked this, apart from the initial novelty value. I also get a feeling that the eventual outcome of the Play-Offs are almost always settled, even before the first race kicks off. The recent Birmingham v Poole encounter proves a point, a complete waste of time in which you knew from the off who the winners would be. British speedway perhaps should use SKY's departure as a time to re-invent the sport, it is too stale right now and really needs a few things throwing up in the air and seeing how they land on the floor..

Speedway can't compete with live matches. While fans are at home, in the warm, comforted by a cup of something and enable to watch a live match, they aren't actually making efforts to attend one. There are no football matches live on TV at 3 O' Clock on a Saturday as, from what I believe, crowds would dip at other matches. The actual knowledge that speedway is live on TV every week does take a certain amount of effort and temptation to attend one in the flesh. I feel the best way for speedway right now, is for an edited highlights show of some sort - whether it be a full macth or ods and sods from various tracks. Speedway can't afford live matches, as it takes something away from actually wanting to attend one.

Phil It is exactly what I have been thinking the past 10 years or so. Promoters seemed all out to inflate speedway's public profile during the initial years of the live coverage but then they seem to become complacent and expected the food of SKY's money to be on the table every season. We all remember the buzz, the Kids For A Quid thing, the face-painting days when SKY was in town. I always remember reading prior to 1999 that SKY weren't interested in covering Elite League speedway, or so the rumours were, because of the derelict looking stadiums and the way they would be portrayed on TV. But they gave us 15 years' great coverage and really received not much back in return. The product they have rented has been allowed to decay over time and now the foundations need a complete rebuild. As tenants, SKY is naturally unhappy about paying for something that has become tarnished over this time. Speedway promoters only have themselves to blame, which is why I wouldn’t trust any of them to reverse me up Blackpool beach. I don’t know if audiences have dropped for live matches, and whether this could have helped SKY decide, that’s if they are ditching us, but the sport became too reliant on their cash, too expectant and became quite lazy about the guarantee of SKY’s paycheque every season. If a rider treated a sponsor the same, that sponsor wouldn’t have given 15 years of their hard-earned dosh. So the sport should be grateful. Just hope they’ve put some of their 15-year winnings away for the ensuing rainy days.

Initially we wished that coverage of live speedway would attract extra interest and help swell terrace support virtue of the mass of newcomers impressed by what they had seen on the box. But all it's achieved, it seems, is fulfil the appetite of people that were already won over. It gave many old stagers chance to remain at home, comforted by a bag of nuts and glass of something or other, and many chose this avenue above actually pulling out their coat every now and then and they actually lost the knack of attending speedway. Besides the hope of SKY's early coverage attracted a new wave of fans that would flock to see our best kept secret, perhaps truth is... that live matches more likely than not encouraged once regular attendees to stay at home.

Remember the days... when you used to wish your team on to an away win, another notch on the ladder towards the league title. The Play-Offs, they say, create a perfect end-of-season finale. But to me, it's like starving all week on cheap noodles, so you can afford a takeaway on Friday. Nigel Pearson summed it up perfectly on Monday... saying Poole were bottom of the table in May (so what, I think Belle Vue was top!). It creates a scenario where the wisest let the others run off first in the cross country marathon, knowing the weaklings will get a stitch somewhere along the way and then... whoosh! along whiz the fittest, roaring across the finish line. It is simply sport's equivalent to The X-Factor. All the rubbish is on first, the last weeks we have the cream. By the way, I have been told about the X-Factor, never having watched it. Rather say I watch speedway, thank you, so you're not having me on that one.

The entire league programme is, and it's only my opinion... simply the padding out of several months... until the crowds come out for the Play-Offs.

Bloody hell, grandad, I thought I lived in the past. Great times they were, but we'll never have that study in speedway again, afraid to say. It is something we like to relive - the times when stadia were sold out for Tests, massive crowds for the average run-off-the-mill league dash-off. It is great to look back. Well, sometimes it is.... From the same period, I have here a batch of old family photographs. Now, look at young moxey63 right there... a fringe (least I had one back then) that has about as much banking as both Halifax and Exeter combined, a five-star jumper with elastic ribbing that I remember scorching in front of the fire, and, well, just look at those shoes.... People called them crape - I thought they were ok.

One thing I noticed about last night were the starts... they were so messy, in other matches it would have been all four back. Stuart Robson has been punished numerous times for having slower reflexes. Should be tape touching and your out... anything else is great anticipation.