Grachan

Hans, certainly. The guy looked like a future World Champion from the moment he arrived, and it seemed to take an eternity for him to actually achieve that. People were, at one time, thinking of him as one of the best riders never to win a world title before he finally achieved it. Erik, for me, kind of snuck in there a bit unexepected just as it seemed like Hans' time had arrived.

In Please Sir, one of the actors was called Eric Chitty and one of the characters was called Peter Craven.

Just as well I put in my maths disclaimer then!

Hey, it wasn't me who started the Bulgaria thing, ya know.

About 18,000 English in Bulgaria according to thsi: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26324564 Population of Bulgaria is around 7,250,000. So around 1 in 400 people in Bulgaria are English. Around 35,000 (estimated) Bulgarians live in the UK (Wiki figures - always reliable!). So 35,000 out of about 64,100,000. So around 1 in 500 people in the UK are Bulgarian. Per capita, there's a higher percentage of English people in Bulgaria than there are Bulgarians in the UK (if I got my maths correct, which is not totally guaranteed).

Actually, I remember seeing a programme on television a while back about the large number of British people who had emigrated to Bulgaria to take advantage of the lower cost of living there. There are so many British people now living there there that there is a TV show called "The English Neighbour", which stars Leslie Grantham who has, himself, moved to that country. I wonder if the Bulgarians think we're a bunch of thieves and pickpockets because we live the easy life off their economy.

Why? Because it was always crazy that the lower league had priority over the higher one. That's why. You think a rider should be prioritised for the club he is owned by? I agree. That's what I said in the part of my post that you decided to delete from your quote.

Funny how, for years, PL clubs (ie the lower league) got priority and the rules were apparently fine. Now the league in which a rider is an asset gets priority and the rules are all wrong just because the lower league can't mess up the EL any more. It was always crazy that the lower league had priority over the higher one.

Bfr my tm

Soldier Boy would, no doubt, be a pretty noisy fan of this lot.

No place for Rene Aas? Very disappointing.

It would probably just end up as a discussion on grammar.

Thnks

v fndn Tny Rckrdssn vn Mgr L Lsn Hns Nlsn rk Gndrsn Brry Brggs

I have made that same point myself in the past. Resort to the old format and all of a sudden you have a 10 pointer in every side. Which also means every team has a full on number one who has an air of invincibility and can be a real hero for the fans. In a way I think the current format makes the league seem weaker. You can see comments quite regularly where people complain it is a weak league because there are no real heatleaders any more. Revert to the old format and suddenly you've got them.

It wasn't so long ago that Sweden and Poland weren't in the EU and their riders had to have just that. I remember Jimmy Nilsen and Per Jonsson struggling to get work permits at the start of their British careers.

What about Thierry Hillaire?

Nobody likes a smart arse, you know! Anyway, I'm off to have some pork chops from my Greg Hancock Lean Mean Grilling Machine!

Maybe, but I certainly would put the likes of Crump and Rickardsson above Woffinden and Kasprzak in the lists of all time greats. You could, of course, also argue that George Foreman mastered the art of pacing himself in his 40s, which he hadn't managed in his youth. Yup. George Foreman. That's who he is!

Greg Hancock, for me, is the George Foreman of speedway. A World Champion in his youth, but over shadowed by an all-time great. Then became a World champion in his forties in a different era, proving that the earlier era was stronger.

Yes. But he wasn't as fast.

Incorrect :-) The letter h is a consonant. When a word begins with a hard consonant sound you would use 'a', not 'an'. So it is 'a hotel'. If the h is silent, eg with the word 'hour', you would then use 'an'. A hotel. An hour. I went to a Grammar school. I know this stuff!!

In which case, the 4.00 average is way too low as everybody averaged over that.

It does if you apply to be come a resident in the uk. But he'd need to set up home here.

I don't know anything about the State Final. It was a response to a comment on averages, which stated he had an verage over 4 in the EL but below 7 in the PL. Based on that, he would presumably be eligible for the EL but not the PL. If he qualifies for a visa via a State final then fair enough, but that's not what I was responding to.