Grachan

A good thing about speedway is that men and women compete equally so whether or not someone is transgender is irrelevant. Or at least it should be! So, presumably, there would be no issue with a transgender woman competing in this as they are still equal competitors.

Celina Liebmann winning this was probably even more of a sure thing than Bartosz winning the Grand Prix series. Maybe the apathy was because men and women compete together in speedway, so having a competition for women only makes it quite a low level competition and little more than a novelty. I think there must be a lot more enjoyment in watching Celina trying to take points off men in the Championship than watching her beat women who (presumably) are nowhere close to her level.

Great racing t Workington again. This track and Belle Vue have to be a blueprint for any new tracks that may be built in the future (**cough** Swindon) Heat 4 was a very strange decision by the ref. Sam McGurk clearly brought Luke Killeen off. You could see the bump when they collided and Sam was snaking afterwards. I can only think that the ref was watching Troy and Scott going at it hammer and tongs half a lap ahead at the time. Tate Zischke looks like he is going to be one hell of a rider. There's a future GP rider right there! (No pressure). They said on BSN that Celina was taken ill on her flight and is in hospital. Hope she is ok.

It's doubtful, but who knows. Someone in the Adver comments seems to be saying they have found one between Wroughton and Royal Wootton Bassett.

I vaguely remember Doug Underwood being a bit of a magician at helping to get meetings at Reading on after heavy rain.

At least those two might actually look for one though!

Interesting little schoolgirl squabble about whether or not Swindon/Oxford/Reading fans should support their local rivals when their track shuts down. My own feeling is there is no right or wrong answer. It's all down to personal feeling. As the saying goes - you can't choose who you support, they choose you. If you feel it, then support Oxford. If you don't, then don't. As a Swindon supporter, do I now support Oxford? I was, after all, born in Oxford and lived near to the city as a small child so it should make sense for me to support them as they are now my local team and a track that I have attended regularly over the years right? Nope. No chance! I just can't do it. I tried. I can't. Nothing against Oxford. I go occasionally and enjoy watching. I just don't care if they win or lose so I can't say I support them. When I saw Arnie there in his Oxford gear, it reminded me of a line in the film "Dances with Wolves": "You turned injun, din'tcha!" Had they signed a team with a few of the old Swindon team - as was mentioned - then I might feel different. Would be a bit weird though. Maybe they should bring Rosco in as team manager and sign Jason Doyle. At least they might have a chance of winning the league then!

To make a switch at reserve would be a major error. Both reserves are improving week by week and are great to watch. Workington is my favourite team right now. Two ex Swindon riders, 3 exciting new foreigners, solid number one and a raw 100% tryer at no 7. This team needs sticking with. I've already got my credit card ready for the next time they are on the telly!

This is correct. I have family in a town called Edesheim in Germany. At the airport, when visiting, I was asked where I was staying and I said "Ede-sheim", only to be told by the airport official that it was pronounced "Edes-heim". Despite this humbling experience, I was still thinking "Land-shut" in my head until you posted that. Bloody English!

Alf Busk at Swindon. He came into the team and was hopeless - barely scored a point for half the season. Then, all of a sudden, he top scored at Belle Vue. I remember it now - looking in disbelief in the newspaper to see the result and seeing "A. Busk 10" written on the results page. Not sure what happened, but from then on, he was very good for the Robins. Another one at Swindon was Bobby McNeil, who signed in 1975 and was a pretty average reserve for the whole year. Last match of the season - top scored with 14 against Hull. Then, the following year, became a heat leader. The Jason Doyle theory is another good one. I really felt that Swindon had drawn the short straw when we swapped Maciej Janowski for Jason but it turned out that we had the better deal. I never saw him as a future World Champion in his early career.

Surely that should be awarded??

I always find Moto GP interviews pretty uninteresting, possibly because the interviewer always asks "How do you feel?"

I remember his autograph was one of my favourites because he put a smiley face on it.

No action against Doyle. Common sensed prevailed in the end. (Six words you don't often see on a Speedway forum).

The first race I saw was at Weymouth v Crewe in 1974. Heat 1 - Dave Morton, Kelvin Mullarkey, Russell Foot, Ian Cartwright. As far as I know, only Kelvin Mullarkey is no longer with us.

I agree. Should be awarded 0-75 everytime there is a call off like this where the meeting could unquestionsbly gone ahead. Promoters doing this kills people's enthusiasm. Someone should have gone there yesterday to investigate it. We might have a situation where Jason Doyle misses a match through no fault of his own and gets a fine or a ban yet promoters can do this.

It's not really that difficult. They used different flights. Doyle's was delayed. Lidsey's wasn't. Could easily have been the other way round. It's not an "excuse". The flight is there to be seen on the Stanstead arrivals board. He probably gets this flight every week, and it gets him here in plenty of time for Monday meetings. Unfortunate, but there you are. RyanAir for you.

Estimated arrival time for the flight is 16:33 (scheduled arrival was 12:20). So he's not out into arrivals until at least 5pm. Even then he's not in Manchester until about 9pm without any delays.

Poznan flight, I assume. Still en route at 15:35.

I can't remember the exact logic of it, but they decided to put everyone's average up by about 40%. For example, Nick Morris averaged 6.41 in 2016, but came in on 8.97 in 2017. Doyle's real average in 2016 was 9.58, but they upped it to 13.41 over the winter. So he was always going to drop by around 4 points.

It wasn't his actual match average. It was the average he was given for team building at the start of the year following close-season assessments. Good thing was, we were allowed a guest with an average of 14.08! Swindon 2017 (thanks Arnie!):

Correct. Which is why he was never going to achieve it. Jason was given an average of about 13.2 for team building one year in a bid to force the top riders out of British Speedway. Thankfully it never worked.

I watched this on BSN. A couple of things made me pay to watch it. One was to see the Workington track - which looks excellent. The other was I was interested to watch Celina ride and see how she did. It's so typical of speedway these days for people to demand changes immediately - I guess it's a product of the points limit to concentrate so much on figures - but I think it would be a major mistake to try and replace her and I'm sure Workington won't do that. Not in the short term, at least. I hope not, anyway. Yes, she's saddled with a 4 point average, but they knew that when they signed her and knew that wouldn't be easy to achieve immediately, but you can see just by watching her that there is a good rider there. Sure, she needs to improve her starting and first turns, but apart from that she's a good as many other reserves in the league. If the more experienced riders in the side can help her with that I reckon there's a bit of a star in waiting right there. Comments that she is "way off the pace" are simply not true. In one race she passed one of the Redcar reserves for a point. In another she snuk past the other reserve momentarily. Not exactly ground-breaking stuff, but not "way off the pace" either. She's also a charismatic interviewee (her dropping of the F-bomb made me chuckle) and someone whose rides I looked forward to seeing and also the main reason that Workington are the Championship side that I - as someone without a team - am most interested in at the moment. Obviously she needs to start scoring more at some stage, but I can honestly see that happening if they stick with her and support her. She doesn't come across as someone who will be phased in trying to do that. It's not all about the average. Swindon took Jason Doyle on a 13 point plus average one year and he was always going to lose about 4 points on that and I think they won the league that year.

Thanks for that Arnie. Looks like that is the case.

I didn't watch the meeting, but from what I can gather, the heat 2 incident happened on the final lap and the other two riders finished the heat to get a 5-0. Could neither of the Leicester riders have pushed round or remounted for a point? The decision seems reasonable to me.