MattK

The only clause was that a maximum of 200 houses could be occupied before contacts for the new stadium were in place. Contracts were "signed" a while ago and suddenly lots of unexpected problem arose. There is a rumour that the old stadium cannot be demolished before the new stadium is in place, but no one has ever produced this is writing.

Harris/Nicholls will score 6 or 7. Kasprzak will score 3 or 13. Worth a roll of the dice to me.

Where are you getting your figures from? I've seen streaming services which would easily meet speedway's needs for as little as £99 per month. In turn, the only other cost is that of actually filming for meetings. The aim of PPV is to generate revenue from people who cannot attend the meetings. As others have said, you run the risk of people choosing to stay at home, but this has to be weighed against what can be received from having a much wider audience.

PPV is a good option if no TV deal is forthcoming. Technically it is quite straight-forwards, but like any new business you have to get the product and price right. How many people (and how much) would pay to see a meeting filmed from a single camera angle, similar to what Bet365 offered a few seasons back? Similarly, if you had a BT Sport style presentation, would the additional viewers justify the significant increase in production costs?

What's to stop people sharing content today? The SGB web site regularly posts videos, full meetings are available on YouTube and yet I never see speedway outside of the community's echo chamber on Twitter and Facebook.

I think the ref was right. The rules state: Therefore, having already been exclused for a "second offence" in heat 3, he effectively has to offend again twice to get excluded. That's my interpretation anyway. I agree with your assessment of heat 12 though.

Trump took over the junior team and wanted to run it the following year (I don't know if his plan was to run Elite League as well), but by that time the stadium owners had had enough and said no.

True, but isn't that part and parcel of being a promoter?

How many clubs have actually gone bust in the traditional sense - as in run out of money and stopped trading? As far as I can tell, there is always another generous benefactor prepared to step in and have a stab at running the club when the previous promoter leaves. All the clubs who have closed in recent memory have done so due to losing their venue, Reading, Oxford, Coventry... Of course, you could argue that running a club sustainability may have helped, particularly in Oxford's case, but this seems like a minor factor in thr grand scheme of things.

It says "up to" £156,000 and it would be interesting to know how many are bringing in £600 a day. That kind of money is achievable in most industries where workers are in demand.

So you don't think studying the right degree would have opened up more opportunities?

It would be interesting to see the survey results of 30-40 year-old non-graduates, asking how many regret not going to university.

The actual rule states "at least 2 riders who have competed in or are eligible to ride in the National League (Conference League)". People seem to abbreviate this to mean "British". As Morris rode for Buxton, he meets this criteria.

So you agree that young raw Australian riders could go and ride in the lower Polish leagues, if they didn't prefer Britain due to our language and cultural similarities?

I'm not sure about that. There are plenty of raw young riders in the Polish lower divisions.

First and foremost I'd say language and then cultural similarities.

Robert Lambert won the U21 Euro championship a fortnight ago against many of the same field. Adam Ellis rides regularly in Poland. The Poles may well have better equipment, but I think that is too much of a convenient excuse to explain why we performed so poorly compared to Australia and Denmark.

We didn't start the fire...

I hate to break it to you, but if Doyle doesn't ride next year his wages will go to Nick Morris.

I think Dean is assuming 34 league meetings, 8 cup, 4 play-offs and 4 shared meetings, equally 50. The same calculations for today's double-uppers would be 64 league meetings, 10 cup, 6 shared and 6 play-offs, equalling 86 meetings (minus clashes). True and I would be interested to know how many of them make a living from one club and how many feel it is a long-term sustainable income.

The simply fact is that will be half the meetings current doubling-up riders have now and as far as I'm aware none are living the life on Riley on British speedway alone. Unless you can come up with a solution to address this, I can't see how it is a viable option.

And what do you put the last 10 years' of decline down to?

What rider demands are killing the sport? As far as I am aware, promoters dreamt up the Elite League Draft as a way of cutting costs. This was the first major extension of doubling-up, allow up to four riders per team to race in both leagues. Then this season the rules were relaxed further with no limit on the number of riders a Premiership team could have riding in both leagues. I am not aware that either of these changes were due to major pressure from riders - they were simply cost cutting ideas from promoters. The fact that riders have exploited these rule changes to allow them to make a living from British speedway is hardly the riders fault.

My issue with one big league is that it represents a huge shift in how British speedway is run and therefore has much more potential to go catastrophically wrong. Couple this with the BSPAs propensity for decisions which have unintended consequences (change in heat format, this year's average farce) I don't have much confidence that it can be delivered without some hideous mess. The only possible way around this I can think of is if the BSPA outline the changes, but they are embargoed for a year so that clever people (fans) can point out the shortfalls and the promoters therefore have time to iron out the kinks.

I don't see how the costs of the legal battle would be associated with the stadium, as opposed to the previous owners.