Grachan

I know. It's frustrating isn't it. I get BT sport and also watch the MotoGP and will watch the GP this year when it comes on. I do watch football, rugby and boxing, but it's only a passing interest and not one that would justify getting Bt Sport just for that, so the same would apply to Sky Sports so I've no interest in adding that just to get the Eurosport. I'm not sure yet if I'll get Eurosport player this year. Swindon aren't riding and Eurosport coverage tends to not be great (although that is based on watching it a few years ago so it might have improved). If I get it, I'll probably get a monthly subscription to the player and see how I get on, although I used to record it and skip quite a lot which won't be an option with that. If Eurosport have the GP next year then maybe I'm more likely to get it (although if it does what it's looking like it might do and becomes a Zmarzlik one-man show I might not bother!) On BT Sport I'd watch it always, but for me, personally, moving it to Eurosport is not a good thing.

You can get Eurosport on BT but need to get it as part of a package that includes Sky Sports and costs over £30. I think the best way if you don't want Sky Sports to get Eurosport player, which you can watch online, which is either 6.99 per month of 39.99 for a whole year, which works out at about 3.33 per month. But it depends how much you are going to watch. If you just want it for Speedway then it's May to September, so 5 months at 6.99 a month, then cancel, which comes to 34.95 (so not much different to an annual subscription). The bad thing is, you can't record it, although I think you can watch stuff on replay. The good thing is, if you go monthly you can cancel at anytime if the coverage is not good. Watch Eurosport Live on Eurosport Player - Eurosport

There is actually a lot more they could do. They could do what Eastbourne have done and be proactive rather than reactive. I looked at the Eastbourne website, and what they have done is spot on. People will feel comfortable that there will be a meeting, they know exactly what they have to do when going, and it would be easy to change things later if they feel more people could be let in as rules get relaxed. I looked at Leicester's website too, as they were mentioned here, and they are doing a similar thing to Eastbourne, although it is not so clear looking at website as you need to go to the ticket information on the website. But at least they have made a decision. King's Lynn should do the same. They can, after all, let more people in on the gate if the situation changes later and things ease up. I looked at the Kent website, as I might be going there for a meeting in June, and there is nothing at all. Just normal ticket information. This is fine for me, as I won't be going there for a while, but I think people need clear and easy to follow information for the opening meetings as a lot of people are probably wondering what will happen.

It's interesting watching discussions on the football breakaway league on TV this morning. People are basically saying that it is not sport if teams can chose their league based on finance and that it cannot be a proper sport if there is no accountability through promotion or relegation as it doesn't matter if you lose. Remind you of anything?

Reminds me a bit of Dave Jessup, who many people think would have won the 1978 World Championship but for an engine failure in his first ride. When it came to the key race to finish in second place, though, he lost out twice, dropping a point to Gordon Kennett in his last heat and then losing a run-off for third against Scott Autrey. Those two races make me think that Jessup would never have won a world title even without engine failures.

King knew Moran was on his inside and was concentrating on Moran. Gundersen came from nowhere. It's as simple as that.

There's one with Ole Olsen around the same time, too, where you can literally see him waving a couple of Danes past on the last lap.

Just watch the race. There is no way they are chucking that race. Moran gets a flyer, nearly breaking tapes. Why do that if he's been paid off? King goes round Gundersen on the second bend. Why? Gundersen was a great starter. All they had to do was let him gate and Gundersen would have been gone. Watch the race. Forget Gundersen and watch King and Moran. They are flat out racing each other. If you met a guy who was in the pits and he said they were paid off he was probably told it by Sam Ermolenko!

Just had a look here: 1985 - Speedway Individual World Final - Bradford (Great Britain) - Erik Gundersen (Denmark) - YouTube Hans Neilsen uses a similar line in heat 10 to pass Jan Andersson (36:30). I remember at the time I very much wanted Neilsen to win and when Erik passed King and Moran I got the hump because he was just copying Hans! The Gundersen race is at 1:03:00. First of all, King passes Gundersen early in the race. Why would he do that if he was chucking the race for Erik to win? It looks to me like King moves in because he is trying to pass Moran and wants to clamp him down, which gives Erik a clear run round the outside. Any idea that King threw the race looks like nonsense to me. I reckon Sam just got the hump because it gave him less chance of winning.

My own memory of Gundersen's pass was that Hans Neilsen had done a similar move in a previous race and Erik had tried the same move and it worked perfectly, just as it had for Hans.

I'm not condoning illegal immigrants, but I'm sure that any who are picked up would be held in holding centres for at least a couple of weeks to ensure they are covid free. As for sending them back to Europe, we can no longer transfer migrant back to France as we have left the EU so are no longer signed up to something called "Dublin III", which allowed asylum seekers to be returned to the EU member state where they came from. Apparently. Not that I recall many being sent back before we left the EU either. Migrant crossings: What happens to migrants who reach the UK? - BBC News

Had to google that. Thandie Newton is actually Thandiwe Newton. And, yes, she's pretty well known.

I've seen wider parking spaces for women in Germany. Maybe they should have them for pensioners too.

I seem to remember that when I started going in 1974, Peter Craven still held a track record somewhere. Not sure where it was now. Maybe Oxford? Or Coventry?

Brilliant. I've been trying (and struggling) to get enthusiasm for Sheffield, as my "second" team with Swindon pulling out. With Steady, Batch and now Adam there I might even make a trip up to watch the Tigers this year. Now, where's my Sheffield Tigers polo shirt? I'm sure I've still got it somewhere.

That may well be the case. All I'm saying is that blaming crowd levels on the percentage of ethnic minorities in the city doesn't make sense. I remember going to a Bradford v Swindon match in what was probably the late 1980s and was pretty much stood alone on the back straight.

This argument doesn't stand up at all, even if speedway didn't attract non-white people. If Bradford has a population of 530,00 and 67.44% of the population are white, that still leaves around 360,000 white people in Bradford. That's more than the entire populations of Poole and Swindon combined.

Alternatively, you only need to finish in the top four so could possibly afford to have a number one missing for a couple of meetings during the season - particularly in a 6 team league. Swings and roundabouts, I guess. It depends when you lose a rider.

Pretty similar to what they did in about 1977 or 1978, but it was only done for one season. It came up with some big scores, with riders like Finn Thomsen and Henny Kroeze getting 21 points, but it was certainly better option than guests. I think they did it that the rider above the missing rider in the averages can have one R/R ride, and everyone else can have up to 3 R/r rides. THen, I think, you were allowed a guest if you had 2 riders missing. When Swindon won the league in 1967 they lost Barry Briggs for about a month following a crash in Germany and had to use their number 8 in his place. They still came top despite that. There is too much of an obsession with equality thee days.

To be honest, I'm kind of resigned to the strength of the league this year after seeing so many riders opt out of their own accord. For example, I was concerned that Adam Ellis might not get a team, only to later discover he had opted out of the UK himself anyway. It now looks like the points limit wasn't as daft as I first thought, although I'm not sure about the number 7 rule - particularly as riders such as Anders Rowe already have a proper team slot anyway. I think that Covid and the Polish rules have effectively finished off top flight speedway in this country.

Surprised to see Anders Rowe signed as he is the type of rider I would have expected to be classed as a "rising star". Good to see him get a team though.

If you are going to stream live interviews during a meeting then surely it's best to put them up on a big screen so that everyone can see them as part of the experience. A stadium full of people wearing headphones and staring at a phone is not going to attract people to speedway. It just makes it less interesting for those who are not doing it.

Spot on. Even my own kids pretty said the same thing. Why would you want a speedway app? You go to speedway if you're in to speedway.

I decided to ask my 20 year old daughter about whether a phone app would attract young people to speedway. She looked at me, screwed up her face, and said: "Why would you have a phone app for speedway?" So I questioned whether or not a phone app might attract young people. She reckons not. Her opinion is you go to speedway because you like speedway not to look at a phone app. Why would anyone go to speedway to look at a phone app, she asked. My teenage son likes speedway and goes sometimes. I asked him about a phone app before when it was suggested. Pretty much the same reaction from him. He'll go because he likes it. A phone app makes no difference. My own opinion - a stadium full of people looking a phone apps would be a silent stadium. Young people are very specific about what social media they use. Even the wrong sort of social media - even though they all do the same thing - is a definite no-no.

If you want to make a football comparison, then the closest to Speedway would probably be the National Conference league, which attracts crowds of around a thousand. The only admission price I could find was St Albans, who charge £18.