uk_martin

How long before people opt for the line of least resistance and just call him Zach Smith, like the character in Lost In Space?

That sounds a delightful prospect, NOT. With "Birkogate" in mind I can just imagine how Brummies supporters will feel when they grow an attachment to a rider, especially one likely to be fulfilling the role that Jason Lyons once did, only to have him whisked away when a failing PL team decides to have a reshuffle. Hands up any Brummies fans who will be happy to be "left in the lurch" as the previous poster says? Keep your hands up while I count... Oh well, the life and times of National League speedway, I guess, innit? Guess a lot of the fans who Tony Mole is relying on to fill the terraces will have to get used to the fact that the National League is not about the winning, it's about the taking part...unless you're Cradley of course, which only makes it doubly hard for a Brummies fan to get used to it.

Be interesting to see this lad's development. He cut his teeth at IoW which is as near as you get this side of the North Sea to a Long Track, and he rode a year and seems to have done quite well at Lakeside. Talk about two tracks that are like chalk and cheese. Still, it should aid the development of his skill set. Slightly concerned (wider perspective) as to why he was a sub-5-pointer and only a #7 in the PL last year and why none of the PL teams have beaten his door down for his signature this winter. I'd have hoped that this EL "Fast Tracking" would have brought him on further than that, and that he'd have gone on to make more progress at PL level this year. However, (narrower perspective) the system's loss could be Birmingham's gain, so good luck to the lad.

Ludicrous innit? Don't we even have a "young" 28 year old starlet in the fast track process???

Jon Armstrong? No-one knows the NL as well as Jon Armstrong. Dan Halsey is also an NL #1 but hasn't he retired now? Maybe Tony Mole can bring him out of retirement? Paul Starke has the average of a NL#1 Did Oliver Greenwood ever appear in a Birmingham Bulls team when there was the Academy League (remember that?) - all those years ago. Would Aidan Collins or Lee Smart be tempted into a comeback and would they qualify for the NL?

How about some real fan involvement?? How about giving each of the top posters on the Brummies Forum one match each when they can be in charge?

They do love their Bank Transfers in Poland, don't they? If your bank is like mine, you can add £30 to the cost of transferring money abroad. Must investigate these online bank transfer web sites. Apart from that, what isn't immediately obvious on the web site, and you only notice on the application form is that the price is in EUROS not zloties. So, prices are between £140ish - £150ish for a ticket, a night's kip and a breakfast.

Has anyone noticed how slowly the remaining VIP tickets are selling compared to the rush on the cheap seats? If the cheap seats have been bought to be sold via third party web sites at a huge mark-up then they must have bought in bulk on the basis that one £38 sale (according to a previous poster) justifies 3 bought tickets at face value...so there could be a lot of "wastage" if the prices don't come down, leading to an embarrasingly empty stadium on the night. It could also dispell any hope of them ever coming back into the Kupbilet system and being available at proper prices.

I suspect a game of brinkmanship is afoot. It's in the interests of BSI / Polish promoters to sell out their VIP tickets so the longer they keep the cheap seats back, the more that people caught somewhere between the devil and the deep blue, like yourself, will be emotionally blackmailed into buying the VIP tickets. I think that the cheap seats will become available again at some point, but not for a while.

Have shared many a flight with people on "package tours". They use Ryanair the same as I do (other airlines are available), get seats in the same stadiums as I do, just that they get picked up from the airport in a chartered coach, whereas I use the bus. The booking.com web site (other web sites are available ;-)) offer lots of great deals on hotels, and when you know the tricks to look out for, renting a car from Hertz can be exceptional value as an alternative to public transport. If you want to go by bus or train around Poland, then, well, trains are trains, and the Polish Railways are getting better every year. polskibus.com (other coach companies are avaialble) offer some good inter-city coach travel options too. With everything being able to be done online at home (or at work if your boss isn't looking) and if you can trust yourself to get it right, then the economies of doing so are compelling.

Phil Morris has been appointed Race Director to the FIM, so at a guess, his SGP and SWC duties will probably preclude him taking up a job in British Speedway. No doubt there will be plenty of Brummies fans that will find that a bitter-sweet pill to swallow if they were hoping to see him back at the Brummies next year but congratulations have to go to Phil for his appointment. Onwards and upwards eh?

Looking a bit further down the road, the news is that a debt free Wanda Krakow are looking for their promotion to League 1 and a new freshly financed Poznan Scorpions will be looking to join the 2nd League in 2016. Maybe a few years later, there will be a couple more EE teams located where the planes go, making more trips from the UK possible.

I'm told that this sort of shenanigans goes on all the time at English cricket grounds for the big international matches...they withhold the cheap tickets until all the expensive ones are gone, then all of a sudden, "another batch of tickets has become available".

Don't give up hope if you haven't got a ticket just yet. reserving a ticket was free...let's see how many reserved tickets come back onto the market when they're not paid for, or once the VIP tickets have sold out to those taken in by the "mind games" - whichever comes first. Maybe if you're a "Bronze" VIP @ £164, but for a £280 "Gold" VIP I'd expect there to be more than just a luncheon voucher.

So you get for about £150 in Warsaw, with 5.5 hours of complimentary drinking time, pretty much what you get for £280 in Cardiff with only 4 hours drinking time? (unless the Cardiff pit walk really is worth £130 of your hard earned ackers?)

Are you running a tour to Warsaw for the SGP there? If so, have you got an allocation of tickets for it? Can the web site be updated for 2015 please?

Amazing how quickly the cheap seats have sold out but how slowly the last remaining VIP seats are now selling. I wonder if the "sell out" has been engineered to "encourage" the sale of the last of the VIP seats before the cheap ones come back onto the market? What else does a "VIP" seat get you apart from admission and a decent view? Is any "hospitality" involved like at Cardiff?

All non-VIP tickets no longer available...and all in two days? Amazeballs.

Did anyone go on this tour? Is there any feedback on it?

Who is that then? Robert Lambert by any chance?

What did anyone really expect? As Falcon Hammer says, it's sad...but no doubt done "in the best interests of British speedway"... (in a pigs eye)

They may have sailed close to the wind once and got away with it. You have to remember that 2010 featured "decision makers" that weren't there at the Planning Permission negotiation stages, may not have been as fully aware of the restrictions, and probably didn't care about the long term consequences either.

Good Friday and Sundays are options on the proviso that there is no more than one meeting a week. So basically there is flexibility about what day the meetings are staged but no more capacity for the number of fixtures.

That's what I was afraid of. Planning restrictions mean that there can only be one meeting a week of not more than 20-21 races, so double headers are out of the question in the event that there is a fixture backlog...so I hope that Cradley have a "location B" up their sleeve because the Brummies won't have. Leads you to wonder what the arrangement would be if either one team or the other has a run of bad luck with the weather. If it's the Brummies who have some rain-off's do they kick Cradley's fixtures off the calendar to get their own ones in, hoping that Cradley can fulfill them at Monmore Wood? Or will the Brummies have to play second fiddle if Cradley are heading to the play-off's and they need their fixtures to be squeezed in? Because with 27 weeks to get 27 meetings in, there is ZERO margin for error on the cancellation front without such a Plan B.

What's the cut-off date for when all the league fixtures in the NL have to be run by? Just wondering as there are 27 weeks between 1st April and mid-Sept, which I'm guessing will be about the date of the cut-off, with 20 league meetings between the 2 teams plus 6 National Trophy plus a Golden Hammer meeting to fit in...it had best not rain, had it? Do Cradley have a fall-back position of filling in a "missing week" in the Wolverhampton fixture list and riding their rain-off rearranged fixtures at Monmore Wood?