uk_martin

Great News! The McDonalds Drive-Thru over the road from the stadium, which replaced the Seventh Trap pub, is now open for business, and is happily serving customers. So, from demolition of the Seventh Trap, realigning Regina Drive, and bringing the construction up to opening, in only 16 weeks, that's an impressive achievement.

Not to mention paying train fares

Seems that Speedway Star's symbiotic relationship with the BSPZzz has been highlighted again, as shown by the withdrawal of the Isle of White (seen as the antichrist by the BSPZzz) fixtures from their publication.

Thank you to the three guest riders who racked up 33 out of Birmingham's 46 points. So, Oxford added Jack Thomas to their team mid-season? Kind of goes to show what can be done. And yet the Brummies still insist on preferring to hire guest riders rather than fielding their "own" team. The number of times that Tom Brennan has appeared for the Brummies this year, it must seem like he's the nearest there is to a rider that is "trippling-up".

Out of 14 riders, 4 are guests and one is called Reidar Replacement, or something. Reidar Replacement and all 4 guests outscored the top-scoring Brummies contracted rider. And I'll qualify that by saying that it took Sedgmen 5 rides to get his 4+1 as opposed to Castagna who achieved it in 4 rides. That, folks, is a major reason why the Brummies are struggling to draw in the fans, I'd say. Who are the fans supposed to "latch onto" and support? Their "own" rider who struggles to pick up points or someone else's riders who are coming to the team's rescue? Not a good situation to be in. Not that you can do much about the guest for Shanes, but the "Sign Vissing and get a guest for the season" situation is one of the team managers own creation. And very lamentable it is too. Try explaining that one to a newcomer to the sport. And as for the guest for Auty, I can only guess that the guest rider is the easy option compared to signing a new rider and re-declaring the team. How long has it been now? It's almost like the Brummies are too comfortable fielding guest riders that they become an integral part of team planning. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't think that's what the fans want.

Tonight has been delayed by a rain shower too...(where the hell did that come from?) so who knows...

The John Barnes of British speedway - always good for his club, always useless for his country.

And he did. The same old colours that he always flies when riding for his country. And on a track that he ought to know like the back of his hand. A complete waste of water and rations, that man.

Run by Steve - steve@gbspeedway.com who has the "About" page written in the first person singular, so obviously a one-man effort. Well done Steve!

A sad reflection of reality that the Festival of Sport doesn't include Speedway... Was that because the promotion didn't put themselves forward to be included, or because they did and their bid was rejected?

At least we know where we stand for the next 4 weeks, and don't have to play the "is he, isn't he" guessing game anymore. So, there's another month of guests to come, which ironically will probably boost the team's firepower. This farce was completely foreseeable though, wasn't it? Some would say this was "cute" team management to sign him, knowing that we'd get to this point where "facilities" worth more than the rider himself would become available. Others would say it's another example of being completely disrespectful to the paying public. Quite frankly I'm not interested in Vissing's reasons for not being available. We all knew it was going to happen, so who cares why? From December onwards, we all read about "how calendars were being checked", so all this was completely predictable. What I'm more interested in is who in the Brummies management signed-off on all of this, knowing what was inevitably going to happen. They sold the story to the fans that Vissing (& Ellis) were going to be in the team for the coming season, not just bits and pieces of the season. Season tickets will have been bought on this basis. The fans deserve answers.

Nor does anyone, I dare say, because finding speedway news in the mainstream press is like finding a needle in a haystack, and that assumes that the needle is in the haystack in the first place. Any other sports though, and the BBC web site is my first port of call. Right now I can get updated on what's going on in the F1 GP and who's leading in Wimbledon. Not only that but I can read great write ups about yesterday's rugby internationals featuring all our home nations as they took on southern hemisphere teams in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa. Oh, and yesterday, I was getting score by score updates, as they happened, on the Australia v England match from the BBC via their mobile App. That's a sports service done properly. Accepting that the mainstream news outlets are never going to take speedway seriously again, it comes down to the likes of Speedway Star to service the audience. And if they did, they'd get a lot more people making use of their web site. Mind you, Speedway Star, being the puppet of the BSPZzz, I can't imagine that they will do anything that will upset their working relationship. If anything was to upset it, and if the BSPZzz decided to stop cooperating with SS, and the flow of press releases from teams to SS was to stop, the SS would be left out on a limb, wouldn't it?

That's just the point though, isn't it? This is 2022 and this thread is all about web sites. Waiting a week to hear about what happened last night, in a paper magazine, is SO 1950's. But maybe that's just symptomatic of the whole sport, isn't it?

Can you provide a link to that please?

Your last two points show why the fans reliance on the leagues organising body's web site is the wrong way of going about it. Of course, SVEMO, the Swedish equivalent of the BSPZzz don't cover worldwide results, nor do the PZM in Poland. Football, rugby cricket etc fans can get their news coverage from the web sites of the national papers, just like Polish speedway fans can (thanks to WP), in effect. It's just too bad that the national papers in this country don't (apart from a very "now and again") want anything to do with speedway at all let alone cover the global aspects of the sport on a serious or regular basis. British (& probably Swedish fans) being kept in the dark does nothing to promote the sport let alone any individual club. Is it any coincidence that those sports that flourish in the UK are the ones where you can find out anything you want about Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich, or IPL cricket, or the All Blacks or Ferrari, etc. from British publications? Keeping a global interest in the sport keeps you attached to the sport and the local teams benefit from that interest and attachment. Not that the BSPZzz or the Speedway Star understand the first thing about that.

Perhaps a better question would be - "where can you buy up to date 2022 Team GB merchandise"?

The BSPZzz site only looks after its own self-interest, i.e. covering what it does, namely the British leagues. That's it. As far as the BSPZzz are concerned, the rest of the sport can take a hike. Promoting the other aspects of the sport should be the domain of the SCB / ACU or even the FIM, in their opinion. And this is where the media coverage of speedway in the UK falls down. There isn't a national media organisation that gives speedway the kind of coverage that say, WP does in Poland. WP (Wirtualna Polska) is like the Murdoch media empire of Poland, running TV stations, newspapers and online news too, most famously Sportowefakty which it acquired and added to its online empire a few years ago. Thanks to Sportowefakty all branches of the sport are covered, and not just in Poland but from many other countries where speedway takes place. If speedway were taken seriously by the general public, it too would feature in national press publications and we as fans wouldn't have to rely on the silo'd perspectives of those with only their own interests at heart. You could argue also that this is the role that the Speedway Star (at the very least) should be leading on...but hey ho..

Would you walk 500 miles to sing that song, or walk 500 more in order not to?

And some wouldn't do that on the basis that you are telling potential car thieves how long they have before you'll be returning to your car....

The council is a political animal made up of politicians with only short-term tenures on their positions. Given a choice of working for the local community who can vote you in or out of a job, or another nebulous community of leisure and pleasure seekers who are scattered all over the place, guess what a politician is going to do? Ultimately Wheels is a great facility, in the wrong place at the wrong time. When it was created it converted a larger derelict area into something that served a purpose. But sadly, that innings is now over. And with carbon footprints coming under scrutiny, having a motorsport facility very near to a Clean Air Zone isn't consistent with council policy either.

They do represent the community, it's just that there are other communities that they represent as well, and other communities are in the majority in that part of Birmingham where the Wheels complex is located, and they are growing rapidly and need housing.

How does this work? How do the people at One Stop know a speedway fans' car from any other car? Letting people know this might be a good idea.

Is that your other half's nickname on BSF then? "The Tail"

OUCH! Only 350, and most of those will be paying concessionary admission... As I say, OUCH!

No, nor has anyone else. I guess that the assumption was made because of how quickly previous promotions have been at snapping up riders for the Brummies. who became available mid-season (Henrik Moller, Carig Watson, Phil Morris & Rusty Harrison spring to mind) that the same will apply now. Graham Drury was ruthless enough at the time to make the changes that he saw as being right for the team. Things are different now.