Grachan

But we'll never know how Zmarzlik or Laguta would have coped once the Championship was on the line either. Neither could pull it off once they had a victory in their sights.

Whilst it would have made more sense if the guests were the other way round, surely Speedway has become too obsessed with averages in recent years, and if both teams agree on this then I don't see too much of a problem with it.

Ha ha. Well I wouldn't have even noticed if you hadn't posted that it was the case.

Or is he saying that the first GP in September (when the World Final was staged) should decide World Champion? Tai scored 4 points in that one.

But it wasn't a one-off World Final. What makes you think that a multi-World Champion would be able to, say, finish in the top 4 of the British Final. Or get through the European final which, if I recall correctly, used to have the top 12 riders qualifying? You can never know. Maybe, under the GP system, Mauger might not have won 5 titles. Maybe Hans Nielsen would have won more and Erik Gundersen less. You can only base riders' achievements using the system that they are using. Both systems are equally valid.

I don't understand why this agreement wasn't that the team with the higher average rider use the guest with the higher average.

Mine isn't, because, whatever happens, Swindon are still victorious. Win win

I think you only have to see what he did on Saturday when the real pressure was on to get the answer to that.

Actually, yes, you are right. Morris 6.91 Kurtz 6.75 Morris should be guesting for King's Lynn, surely? In the end, though, this is better than having a guest swap for each leg.

Blimey. Common sense prevails. Who'd'a thought it?

Oh God! That race! It nearly killed me, as a Swindon fan. I went to a Swindon v Ipswich meeting many years ago and there was a race between Jimmy Nilsen and Jeremy Doncaster that I thought was so good that I bought the video. I later put it on YouTube. This is it - back from the days when Swindon gave us great racing:

Probably true, but his win was more of a surprise. There is a big difference from doing well in qualifiers than there is in actually winning the title. Muller had already proved his championship mentality with Long Track wins. His win never surprised me one bit. What did surprise me, though, was the indignation from British fans afterwards as if a non-BL rider had no right to be World Champion.

Didn't Tai win as a wildcard first time round? Havvy winning the World Title was probably the biggest shock result in my time at least. Much more so than Muller.

I don't know why so much kudos is given to BBC Sports Personality of the Year. It hasn't meant a lot for many years now. There was a time when anyone could vote for whoever they wanted - although it seems that even that was filtered anyway. These days it means little more than winning I'm a Celebrity or Strictly Come Dancing. Just an evening phone vote - which has now, apparently, been made even more of a closed shop to ensure they get who they want. As soon as it became like REality TV it became pretty pointless really.

I agree, although looking back at the British World Champions since I started going in 1974, if any of them were made of the same stuff as Woffinden then it would be Peter Collins.

A lot of it, I think, goes back to the myth propogated at the time that if you didn't ride in the UK then you weren't any good. I also used to have a video about Ivan Mauger, calked Circuits of Gold, in which Ivan's wife talked about Ivan beating himself up trying to emulate stuff that Egon Muller was doing.

No way was Egon Muller a shock winner. I went to that meeting, and beforehand pretty much everyone on our coach thought he might win. He might not have won it on a Grand Prix system, but on a one-off in Germany he was one of the favourites.

I don't think many - if any - riders have the luxury of deciding where they want to ride these days. Most are probably just glad to get a team place wherever they can be fitted in, what with points limits, average restrictions etc. Even the World Champion was surplus to requirements this year, and while he was seemingly happy to move to Somerset, if they hadn't decided to come in for him then he would not have been there.

Maybe people are waiting to make sure he actually achieves it first!

It wasn't the same for both. Somerset missed out on 4/5 Holder rides, Poole missed out on 3/4 from Kurtz, as he had one ride (his exclusion). That one extra ride may well have seen Somerset through.

A fabulous finish to what could have been a disaster after the delays at the beginning. I was rooting for Somerset, so was disappointed that they lost out - but what away to finish, with the move from Bomber. I thing Doyle was looking round too much in that race. Had he kept his head down and just gone for the win I think he would have won it. The Rebels were disadvantaged big time by Holder getting wiped out. Although both riders were injured, Holder was the innocent party in the crash. Plus he missed all his rides, but Somerset couldn't use Doyle as a replacement. It reminded me a bit of Swindon last year, with the side struggling in the middle heats due to the long gaps between Doyle's races. Doyle's exclusion could have gone either way really. No doubt he laid the bike down, but the start itself could be called unsatisfactory as the riders did bump. No argument either way, really. Now that Somerset are out, I would like to see Poole win the final - mainly because there is no centre green at King's Lynn and I find that SO annoying.

I think you are being over-sensitive. It is just a quicker way of describing the idea of the PL and CL merging. If they merged, then they would merge into one big league instead of two smaller ones. Nobody thinks the NL doesn't exist.

Surely it would be good business for Berwick, Redcar and Scunthorpe to have teams like King's Lynn and Poole in town? Why is speedway so obsessed with getting teams exactly equal? The teams would be built under the same points limits, or they could ride in the NL if they couldn't compete at CL level. Speedway really needs the top division to be a decent size, even if it is set at current CL level. If nobody will move up, what if the 7 PL teams say that they intend to drop down to the CL. What would happen then?

There you go. Five points.

So what's the point of the 7.96 GSA then?