MattK

I disagree. Many F1 drivers would get in the list, as would Colin McRae, Barry Sheen etc. No speedway rider has come anywhere close to the profile of those.

But speedway is their job. They have decided that they'd prefer a steady income to chasing international success. Same with the likes of Watt and Schlein who are clearly past their best and how simply want to provide for their families. Seems reasonable to me.

To what purpose? I would rather have riders committed to Britain and if that means allowing doubling-up/down, then I don't see a problem with this.

I don't think it was even a case of bending over backwards. Holding banger racing til 1am and then cars being loaded onto trailers until 3am is clearly unacceptable in any reasonable human being's book. As for this petition, the fact that the Supreme Court has rules than Mildenhall couldn't use the fact that the neighbours had come to the nuisance as a defence, suggests it is highly unlikely a law will be passed forcing homeownsers to waive their right to complain about the noise from a nearby venue.

You're right, but wasn't it more the case that Mildenhall didn't have any specific noise restrictions in their planning permissions, therefore they had to ensure they were not causing a nuisance due the usual course of their actions? Coupled with the fact that their whole defence seemed to be "we were here first" which the courts roundly rejected. As an outsider, it would seem that an amicable arrangement could have been agreed long before this reached court.

Did Mildenhall's planning permission allow them to operate until 3am, as that's what was claimed in court?

What absolute nonsense. Anyone who moves close to an existing motorsports stadium should reasonable expect the facility to operation within the boundaries of their planning permission. If they flaunt that, then the resident is perfectly entitled to complain about the noise.

What terrible logic. Teams will use the extra points to strengthen at the top, not to give team places to secondstrings from last season.

I agree that it's a ridiculous situation, but hasn't it been caused, at least in part, by having a cutoff of 28 August for team changes? With the playoffs running into the middle of October it is clearly too early to allow teams to adequately cover for injuries and other unexpected circumstances.

The thing is, councils are increasingly being encouraged to sell their assets on order to keep council tax bills down. This makes is even more "strange" that Manchester City Council are prepared to borrow £6m, take on the risk of building a stadium and then leasing it to private company.

I think 6,024 is the total capacity. Grandstand: 1,842 seats South stand: 3,248 standing North eastern and western: 508 and 426 standing There doesn't look to be much space for additional temporary stands. http://www.publicaccess.manchester.gov.uk/associateddocs/selecteddoc.aspx?106133-dsp-0001.pdf

If you look at the most popular speedway game on Android, it has received over 50,000 downloads. Presumably also a similar amount on iOS. 3D games are easy to build if you have a good eye for design using an engine like Unity. Personally, I'd go for a management style game, rather than a racing game. If you had 2,000 active users paying just £1 a month, that's a nice little second income.

How did they change the rules?

Fans didn't turn out for the KO Cup. OK, you could argue that it was treated with contempt by promoters (which it was), but the simple fact is there's no point in flogging a dead horse.

Should be the strapline of this site.

You've got more chance of being invited to Bilderberg than a supporter being invited to the AGM.

Crowds look terrible on TV, certainly no larger than the better supported EL clubs?

Cost? Sky seem to have cut back on their production. When they were at Swindon they had no camera up in the cherry picker and no bloke near the start line with the swingy camera on a crane type deal (sorry for non-techies, I have tried to use layman's terms where possible).

How about marketing speedway at the over 40s? Just a thought.

Only 380 parking spaces as part of the development though. Presumably the greyhound stadium has parking, as well as the big cinema complex?

How close is the new stadium to the centre of Manchester? Does anyone know what sort of overflow parking and/or public transport arrangements there will be?

Speedway has lost thousands, if not tens of thousands of supporters in the last decade. A good place to start would be to try and tempt them back.

All age groups are welcome, but speedway's biggest problem is that it tries to be all things to all people. An extreme sport and a family sport. Appealing to youngsters as well as continuing to attract the older generation. What happens is that it fails to be any of those things. It is not extreme enough (in both racing and presentation) to attract youngsters, but it too expensive to attract families en masse. Speedway needs to pick a group and market at those people.

Are there really though? I've heard this anecdotally, but has anyone actually researched which clubs simply cannot ride on certain nights due to clashes or planning restrictions? I think it should either be: Elite - Wednesday and Thursday Premier - Friday and Saturday National - Tuesday and Sunday or bite the bullet and have one large Premier League split on a regional basis with a North v South play-off for the league title.

Personally, I don't think young people are the future of speedway. £21 to attend a speedway meeting (£17 entry, £2.50 programme and £1.50 parking) is simply too much. To put it another way, it's a new Xbox One/PS4 game every two meetings. Given that the majority of speedway's current crowd are over 50, why not promote the sport at that market? Older people are minted (thanks to no dependants and very generous state pensions) so have plenty of disposable income.