Grachan

Interesting that Terry Russell talks about "his" contractors and "the clubs" contractors. It certainly gives the impression that the club are paying for this rather than the stadium owners.

I went to the Basketball play-off final a few years back. It's a great show, but they do, of course, have the advantage of the indoor lighting/facilities and so on. Interesting, also, that it attracts their biggest crowd of the season, but the play-off winners are not also league champions.

I did actually think about that. I knew it was one or the other, as it was often misspelt, and then went with the wrong one!

Possibly Broadbanks, although he was a bit before my time and I never saw him ride for the Robins. Briggs was, too, but his record speaks for itself so I included him anyway.

Have to agree with you on Billy Saunders. Even in 1983/84, when he was being talked about as a contender at the start of televised meetings, I never really saw it.

To be fair, Jason Crump was a brilliant number one for Swindon, who practically saved them following their relegation, so could, perhaps, justify inclusion. But it was only for one season and in the lower league, so not for me. Janowski never looked like a world class prospect until leaving Blunsdon though.

Definitely. Likewise a Swindon fan having Maciej Janowski or Jason Crump. 1. Barry Briggs 2. Leigh Adams 3. Phil Crump 4. Jason Doyle 5. Martin Ashby Reserves! Jimmy Nilsen and Bob Kilby

You could easily flip that to say that an injury to a rider can give a lesser rider a greater chance of winning, thus making it easier to win a one-off final if you are not the best in the World.

Oh, definitely. But to win the meeting you had to win the final. It didn't matter how well you did in the other races as long as you stayed in. A Nielsen/Gundersen final was by no means a cert for Hans, even if Erik had to go through eliminators to get there. For example, Nielsen gets through every ride with a first or second. Gundersen has a bad night, scrapes through an eliminator due to another rider being excluded. Makes the final. Wins it. Gundersen gets more GP points the Nielsen.

I think it would have depended on the format. I've always felt that the old Knock Out system in the GPs would have suited Gundersen more than Nielsen. On a system of race points I think Nielsen would have dominated, but in the KOs I think Gundersen would have had an edge because he just needed to scrape through to the final and then win it.

I think, if the Grand Prix had been in effect earlier, Hans Nielsen would be seen as the undisputed best rider of all time, but for a while he always seemed to mess up the one-offs for some reason. A Grand Prix system would have been much more forgiving of those mistakes.

It was before my time, but I have always assumed Bob was taken away from Swindon and given to Exeter by Rider Control in order to allow Martin Ashby to return from the Falcons. So, Bob coming back to Swindon seems fair as he was originally taken away. What seems unfair is Oxford losing Middleton, if they had paid a fee for him. Rider Control was a strange beast, which would never be allowed to work today. There were a lot of strange events at Oxford, in particular, with that system.

I remember being in the "posh" end, just before the first bend and spent the whole evening moving my head about trying to see the racing with so many people standing in front. I was only 13. Bob was brilliant in both matches, and it was such a big deal when he returned to Swindon the following year.

The biggest crowd I ever saw at Swindon was a double header in 1974 against Hackney and Belle Vue - with Bob Kilby guesting for the opposition in both matches. I didn't even get in the stadium until about heat 4 of the first match because of the queues, and you literally could barely move in the stadium. It was rammed solid all the way round. That was my first season watching speedway, and I've never seen a crowd like that since at a domestic meeting.

Tougher than individual final line ups. Grand Prix meetings pretty much consist of the best 16 riders in the World. Individual finals didn't. For example, nobody would say that Peter Collins wasn't a deserving champion in 1976, but the top 2 riders in the World from the previous season weren't in the meeting. Of course, you could argue that it was because qualification was more difficult, but as meetings themselves, the GPs have stronger line ups. World finals also always had 4 or 5 fillers.

Probably one of the World Finals in Katowice.

According to Liam Howlett of Prodigy, he took his own life.

How about this then. Swindon were a most unfortunate team in 2015. I'm pretty sure they would have won the league if Darcy Ward hadn't been injured. That was a most unfortunate accident.

Phil Crump scored a full maximum against them though! My selective memory has conveniently forgotten what the rest of the Swindon team scored in that match!

In 1975, Swindon announced that they were going to sign Kenneth Selmonsson from the touring side Kaparna. Sadly we missed out on him in the end and went for Jan Andersson instead. So that worked out pretty well!

Finished ahead of Martin Ashby twice! (Mind you, Martin Ashby had an EF both times - once at Oxford and once at Swindon)

I think tracks like Swindon, Sheffield and King's Lynn are not so well suited to the modern bikes as they were for the old ones. I remember at Swindon you would get riders lying on the tanks long-track style down the straights and squeezing past riders, but not it seems that a lot of the time everyone just rides on the one, fastest, line. However Grand Prix and World Cup (RIP?) racing is as good, if not better, than any racing from the past.

Silver was brilliant at Swindon - at least he was in my selective memory where he regularly passed people "for fun" and was a master of the first bend cut-back that Tai Woffinden gets a lot of praise for today. Probably my all-time favourite rider.

Didn't Swindon legend Jerzy Trzeszkowski become Swedish?

Wasn't Ander Michanek's sister meant to be pretty good? I remember Simon Cross also having a sister who rode.